On May 27, 2022, Mr. Dao Ngoc Ninh, Deputy Director of the Consultative Institute for Socio-Economic Development of Rural and Mountainous Areas (CISDOMA), had a conversation with Nhan Dan Weekend Newspaper to share his views on what needs to be done to promote the development of disaster prevention and control technologies in Vietnam.
I. Assessment of Technology Application Potential in Disaster Prevention in Vietnam
Mr. Ninh first assessed the feasibility of applying technology in disaster prevention in Vietnam.
- Serious and Extreme Nature of Disasters: According to him, natural disasters in Vietnam are currently very severe, characterized by extremely erratic, abnormal, and difficult-to-forecast and difficult-to-warn elements.
- Unsustainable Development Factors: Besides climate change, factors stemming from unsustainable development processes also contribute to increasing disaster damage:
- Over-exploitation of resources: Specifically, the development of reservoirs in the upstream areas of rivers has altered flow patterns, reduced the amount of alluvium, silt, and sand reaching the downstream, coupled with excessive sand mining, leading to increased riverbank erosion.
- Decreasing Forest Quality: Especially in upstream forests and coastal mangrove forests, this increases flash floods, landslides, and erosion in estuaries and coastal areas.
- Unsynchronized Urbanization: Urbanization demands massive drainage capacity. However, unsynchronized urban planning, which fails to reserve space for green areas, water retention, and drainage, poses a major challenge for urban areas. Many old houses, poor residential areas on the urban outskirts, temporary structures, electrical poles, and billboards are not safe against storms, floods, and whirlwinds.
- Challenges in Mountainous and Central Regions:
- Most residents in the northern mountainous and Central regions live on high mountains or right next to rivers/streams, or immediately below road slopes, making them highly vulnerable to flash floods and landslides.
- Some residents maintain nomadic and slash-and-burn practices, making disaster control difficult.
- The wide, fragmented terrain, scattered population, untimely communication, and limited awareness among locals pose challenges for disaster response guidance.
These issues continue to create enormous challenges, demanding a change in the vision for disaster risk management and a suitable economic development model to proactively prevent and respond in a timely manner. Therefore, the application of modern science, technology, and techniques in disaster prevention and control is absolutely necessary to minimize disaster damage.
II. Current Applications of Technology in Disaster Prevention
Mr. Ninh shared how these activities are currently unfolding in practice:
- Structural Measures: Some new technologies and materials have been used, such as:
- Geotextile products in the form of filter layers or concrete mattress bags/sand mattress bags, which increase bank stability while also facilitating vegetation growth and environmental landscaping.
- Spur dikes with reversed circulation structures.
- Safe house and flood-proof house designs.
- Non-structural Measures: Science and technology play a vital role in data collection, simulation, and early forecasting of impacts, as well as predicting potential damages for each disaster event.
- Combining historical data, systematically recorded and stored, integrated, and synchronized information systems can provide more complete information before, during, and after each disaster.
- Recent Technological Applications (Past 4 Years):
- Application of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones, flycams) in monitoring and data collection before and after disasters.
- Creation of visual, detailed 3D maps of affected areas or areas with high risk of landslides and flash floods.
- Research and gradual development of disaster simulation systems, supporting training, propaganda, and communication about disaster prevention.
- Application of technology to build online maps for information management on the internet.
- Gradual formation of specialized databases: remote sensing database, socio-economic database for disaster prevention, damage database, inter-reservoir operation database for 11 river basins, etc., to support decision-making.
- Development of the Vietnam Disaster Monitoring System (VNDMS) for centralized, timely, and visual information management serving disaster prevention. The system currently integrates nearly 1,900 rain gauges and over 400 automatic wind observation stations; 133 cameras monitoring reservoirs and dikes; 67 vessel mooring areas; and a monitoring system for 26,556 fishing vessels. The information is provided in real-time or near real-time, effectively supporting directorial and operational decision-making.
- Development of a WebGIS map for riverbank and coastal erosion in the Mekong Delta region, featuring about 500 erosion points and prevention/control structures. This is an effective tool for supporting decision-making in erosion prevention.
III. Solutions to Promote Technology Development (Challenges and Recommendations)
Mr. Dao Ngoc Ninh stated that applying technology in disaster prevention is a complex, multi-sectoral field. To promote technology development in Vietnam, current challenges must be addressed:
| Challenge | Recommendation/Solution |
| Data Management Issues | Enhance information and data management capacity towards centralization, avoiding redundancy and overlap. |
| Data is scattered, redundant, and unsynchronized. | Gradually build a unified information management, direction, and operation system for disaster prevention and control from the Central to local levels. |
| Difficulty in information/data sharing between agencies. | Develop a data platform and interconnected disaster monitoring system. |
| Data formats/types differ, limiting sharing and connectivity. | |
| Lack of Uniform Standards | Advise and formulate regulations for information collection and sharing among agencies and organizations for common purposes. |
| Some product types (maps, etc.) lack common format regulations, making integration into general management systems difficult. | |
| Human Resource Capacity | Intensify training and capacity building for staff in applying new technologies to disaster prevention and control. |
IV. Resources and Mechanisms (Addressing Bottlenecks)
Responding to the question about “Resources and Mechanisms” being a bottleneck at the local level, Mr. Ninh frankly shared:
“Current budget funding from the state is only at the level of incident handling, not long-term and fundamental, sometimes lacking unity across ministries and sectors, and does not support comprehensive handling of all types of natural disasters as stipulated in the Law on Disaster Prevention and Control, which makes post-disaster recovery and prevention difficult.”
He proposed the following measures:
- Increase Investment and Budget Reserves: Strengthen investment sources and budget reserves, and establish clear mechanisms for using the budget for disaster prevention and control, not just emergency relief reserves.
- Mobilize Participation: Mobilize the participation of science and technology enterprises, the community, international organizations, and NGOs in disaster prevention and control efforts.
- Ensure Maintenance Funding: Implement mechanisms to ensure regular funding for the maintenance and upkeep of disaster prevention structures and to ensure a faster return to stability after a disaster.
