Social Sustainability Assessment of Groundwater Resources in Hanoi, Vietnam by a Simple AHP Approach

Abstract

In Hanoi, Vietnam, the people heavily depend on groundwater resources for both domestic and industrial uses due to the seriously polluted problems occurred in most of the river streams system. Considering the social dimension in the context of sustainable development is a key issue in groundwater resources management. The main object of this study is to assess the social sustainability of groundwater resources in Hanoi by applying a simple Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. By applying the simple AHP, the most important task is to comprehensively study the current social situation and actual problems to define the appropriate foremost components contributing to the sustainability goal. In this study, we successfully not only select the appropriate list of three main social sustainability aspects including the quantity, quality and management aspects and the twelve core social sustainability indicators but also appropriately assessing the sustainability of the groundwater resources from the social point of view. By gathering the data from trusted sources, the groundwater quantity, quality, and management aspects are socially assessed at a good level of 0.65, a good level of 0.61 and a slightly acceptable level of 0.46, respectively. The composite social sustainability index, S, is assessed at a strongly acceptable level of 0.57, indicating that Hanoi’s groundwater resource is socially acceptable. The results of SSA are not only sensitive to data availability but also the definition of the indicators. The linear relationships do not reflect the actual situation well and the non-linear ones could be used to replace these sustainability scales of the actual values. The social sustainability indices are evaluated at the moderately high values, improbably reflecting the current problems in the target area. The study then points out the main research gaps and suggests the ways to improving social sustainability assessment for the better groundwater resource development.