Assessment of vulnerabilities to climate change for urban water and wastewater infrastructure management: Case study in Dong Nai river basin, Vietnam

Abstract

Climate change (CC) is likely to have negative impacts in many regions of Southeast Asia including Vietnam. Increased understanding of Vulnerability Assessment (VA) methods and their applications are gaining much more interest. However, there is a shortage of practical CC risk and VA tools and techniques in the context of urbanization particularly for Water and Wastewater (W&WW) infrastructure management. In addition, W&WW infrastructure management is a complex issue with a limited knowledge of how to incorporate CC issues into local plans, thus bringing more difficulties in developing good adaptation measures and strategies. Therefore this paper describes results and experiences of applying various assessment tools and techniques for assessment of CC vulnerabilities of urban W&WW infrastructure management. Improved understanding of CC risk assessment in Dong Nai river basin, Vietnam is presented. Our research findings provide an adaptive supportive platform for conducting VA for urban W&WW infrastructure at the local level through an integrated assessment approach, through applying selected assessment tools and techniques, including Bayesian Networks, Multiple Criteria Analysis, Impact Matrix, Problem Tree Analysis and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). This work presents an integrated approach of applying a suite of tools and techniques for facilitating implementation of Climate Chang Vulnerability Assessment (CCVA) at the local level. Importantly, PRA is a critical technique that provides input data for other tools and techniques used in the assessment process, especially for investigating local vulnerabilities and adaptation measures. Further studies are recommended to develop appropriate assessment tools which would support the application of CCVA process at the community level.