Flood in central Vietnam

2.2 FLOOD IN CENTRAL VIETNAM

Figure 2. Collaged images highlighting victims affected by flood in Central Vietnam. From Thao Nguyen Le, by Thao Nguyen Le, 2021. Copyright 2021 by Thao Nguyen Le.

Ranked in the top five easiest targets of climate change (Pollack et al., 2016), Vietnam is even vulnerable to such low-level storms as tropical cyclones, which can pose significant threats to the area and leave behind serious death rates.

The scope of this thesis is based on Quang Nam - one of the most renowned provinces in Central Vietnam. The natural topography of this site has made it adversely affected by natural hazards in different forms, including sea-level rise, floods, and droughts. Tuan and The (2009) have claimed in their publication that these extreme weather conditions have caused annual damages to the local infrastructure, agriculture, and human lives. In fact, Lam Thi Thu (2009) has exemplified that the flood of 2017, which is the biggest one in the past 17 years, had its destructive damage originated from the unexpectedly short time to prepare between flood events during the disaster. There was not enough time for the local communities to fortify their protection and recover from one event before another.

The alarming rate of these extreme weather conditions will continually increase over the next decades, devastating impacts on the affected communities’ social and economic dimensions (Tran Nu Quy, 2020). However, it is indisputable that damage assessment reports mostly concentrate on economic impacts and death rates while letting issues on local health and wellbeing caused by those destructive hazards less well-analysed and studied. (Navrud et al., 2012)

It is a matter of fact that a number of individuals affected by floods in Central Vietnam have their health and wellbeing adversely affected. Indeed, most of them have unusually high rates of PTSD, various disabilities, and somatic syndrome, which are caused by different post-disaster consequences, including financial stress (Pollack et al., 2016). Bearing these mental burdens, these people who have lost their homes, family, and friends need a tremendous amount of help in different areas of life to reconstruct their pre-disaster lives. Henceforth, it is apparent why this thesis proposes an environment where the recovery process is put at the front to rebuild the affected local communities.