Assessment Framework of Urban Spatial Adaptability to Drought—Flood Coexistence (DFC). A Case Study from Phan Rang-Thap Cham City, Ninh Thuan Province, Vietnam

Abstract

AbstractMeasuring urban spatial adaptability to environmental stresses has recently been a popular topic in urban planning towards resilient cities. Urban Resilience has emerged over the past few decades across multiple dimensions from economics, society, environment, physics, and urban planning. Recently, many scholars in the planning have further investigated urban spatial Resilience to natural disasters and have stated that adaptive capacity is the critical factor to achieve Resilience. In Vietnam, the central provinces currently suffer from extreme climate events that cause heavy damage, such as droughts and floods. Ninh Thuan province, located in the South-Central Coast, at coordinates 11°18′14″ to 12°09′15″ Northern latitude, 108°09′08″ to 109°14′25″ Eastern longitude, is the typical place. The case study focuses on the capital city Phan Rang-Thap Cham City’s context—one of the most developed and vulnerable communities in the province of Ninh Thuan—to build an assessment framework of urban spatial adaptability to drought-flood coexistence (DFC). The framework consists of rows of urban spatial components and columns of adaptive indicators and variables to D.F.C. Urban spatial adaptability of Phan Rang-Thap Cham is measured by two methods. The first one is a qualitative analysis of urban spatial components, such as spatial networks and their land covers, based on adaptive variables to D.F.C. The second one is a quantitative analysis of the examined urban spaces interacting with the Remote Sensing (R.S.) index such as Normalized Different Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST). Both of the two methods were carried out thanks to the utilities of R.S. and Geographic Information System (G.I.S.). The content of the study is reflected in four parts: (i) Overview of the concepts of urban spatial Resilience and adaptability, (ii) Study methodology and steps, (iii) Assessment framework of urban spatial adaptability to D.F.C., (iv) Conclusions.KeywordsDrought-flood coexistence (D.F.C.)Urban spatial resilienceUrban spatial adaptabilityAdaptive indicator to D.F.C.Adaptive variable to D.F.C