Project Team:

University of Cologne: Prof. Dr. Javier Revilla Diez, Roxana Leitold (M.Sc.)
Coordinated by: Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), Prof. Dr. Matthias Garschagen

Subproject collaboration partners: Centre for Economic and Financial Research, University of Economics and Law (UEL, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM, Hanoi, Vietnam)

Duration: 2019-2022

Funded by: Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Project description

The IPCC rightly warns that the risk of flooding in coastal megacities is rapidly rising, especially in Asia, due to the overlapping effects of climate change and strong urbanization. Flooding of these cities increasingly challenges the sustainable development trajectory not only of the cities themselves but of entire countries and regional economic systems. Ho Chi Minh City, the largest city and economic powerhouse of Vietnam, is a prime example with one of the highest levels in (future) flood risk of all coastal cities globally.

Our sub-project specifically targets the flood exposure, impacts and adaptation options of individual firms and businesses in Ho Chi Minh City. We argue, that the exposure of firms in Ho Chi Minh City is yet an underemphasized but important issue of the existing debate on urban flood risk. The objective of our research is to gain an improved understanding of how firms are acting under the uncertainty of flooding and to capture the capacity and willingness of local firms to engage in flood-adaptation initiatives.

The project is conducted within a wider multi-disciplinary research team of the project:

DECIDER - Decisions for adaptive pathway design and the Integrative Development, Evaluation and Governance of Flood Risk Reduction Measures in Transforming Urban-Rural-Systems.

DECIDER is focusing on adaptation pathways in the context of increasing flood risk in transforming rural-urban-systems. It aims at developing knowledge-based solutions for the design, evaluation and implementation of robust adaptation pathways and thus collecting the main flood risk adaptation measures (large and small-scale) that are currently implemented or planned in Ho Chi Minh City. In a second, the results and evaluation methods shall be translated into a practical tool for decision support of local and regional employees in charge of flood protection.

More project information:

BMBF Client II: https://www.bmbf-client.de/en/projects/decider

Vietnamese-German Zentrum (VDZ), Project Office for Sustainability Research in Vietnam (VD-Büro), Hanoi, Vietnam: https://www.vd-office.org/en/decider-2/