Flood control looked at from urbanization in Ho Chi Minh City

VietnamNet Bridge: Professor Le Huy Ba, Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Environmental Management, talks with VietNamNet about flooding and flood control in Ho Chi Minh City.

How do you assess the flooding situation in HCM City at present?

...Due to the geological position of Ho Chi Minh City, the city is categorized as "semi- flooding tide city." The city's main drainage direction is North, North West, North East to South, Southeast. Therefore, the more we expand the modern urban area in the South, East of Saigon like Binh Chanh, District 7, Nha Be and Can Gio, the more we prevent the drainage of the city.

You mean that urbanization is probably the culprit, how about the consequences of climate change?

When considering the cause of flooding in Ho Chi Minh City, we need to consider a combination of rain, tide and the urbanization process. In particular, the element that enhances rain and tide, making more severe impacts on urban flooding is climate change. Climate change makes the earth warming, the sea level rise, especially when the tide has increased and will rise by 1 m by the end of this century.

All temperature measure stations confirm the evidence of climate change. Currently, the average temperature has increased by 0.3 to 0.4 degrees Celsius over the past decades and it tends to further increase. The model studies show that in the 21st century, the Earth's average temperature could increase from 1.1 to 6 degrees Celsius.

As the sea level rises by 1 meter, 14 million people in the Mekong Delta will be affected, 40,000 km2 of the delta will be flooded and 1,700 km2 of coast will be submerged. Ho Chi Minh City (Can Gio, Nha Be, District 2, District 8, District 7, Thu Thiem, part of Binh Thanh, Binh Chanh) will be encroached by salt water.....

Ho Chi Minh City from the Saigon River, shot by Iostream01, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license