Climate Change Vulnerability of Urban Development in the PhanrangThapcham (Ninh Thuan, Vietnam)45215

EDESUS Conference Proceeding (56 of 1531) Climate Change Vulnerability of Urban Development in the Phanrang-Thapcham (Ninh Thuan, Vietnam) Tuy Bao Van(1)*, Tho Tran Quang(2), Kien Nguyen The(3) (1) HCM City University of Natural Resources and Environment, HCM City, Vietnam Southern Institute of Water Resources Research, HCM City, Vietnam (3) VNU University of Economics and Business, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam (*) Correspondence email: bvtuy@hcmunre.edu.vn (2) Abstract: The impacts of climate changes and extreme weather events in recent years have destructive impacts on urban development Climate change increases in the frequency and severity of floods, and as well aware, the impacts of flooding include loss of human life, damage to property, destruction of roads, schools, hospitals, markets, irrigation channels, dams, destruction of crops, loss of livestock and deterioration of health conditions due to waterborne diseases As the consequence, all these effects will have severe damage to urban development This paper recognized key aspects of urban that could be adversely affected by climate change, develop measures and standards for assessing the vulnerability to urban, develop an urban database of the sensitive variables consistent with the vulnerable assessment measures, and applied the criteria in a study of the vulnerability to PhanrangThapcham urban Key findings highlight approximately 50% of the area has a medium vulnerability, 10% of the area has a high vulnerability Areas along the Dinh river and the center area of the urban have a low vulnerability Keywords: Climate change; vulnerable assessment; impacts; urban; Phanrang-Thapcham; Vietnam Introduction All human activities such as land use change, fossil fuel burning are increase of greenhouse gases into atmosphere, which result climate change The main characteristics of climate change are changes precipitation particularly over places; increases in average temperature in global scale (global warming); melting of ice and glaciers insulting sea level rise (UNFCCC 2007) According to The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, over the last century, the average global temperature rose by 0.74° C and is predicted by 2100 range from 1.8° C to as much as 4° C During the 20th century, sea levels rose by 0.17 meters and by 2100, projected to rise between from 0.18 to 0.59 meters (IPCC 2007) Because of climate change, there are many negative impacts such as water resources for human use will be exhausted from ice and glaciers melting such as Greenland in recent years (UNEP 2007) Moreover, the type, frequency and intensity of extreme events, such as hurricanes, typhoons, heavy precipitation events, floods, and droughts are also expected to rise (Greenough et al 2001) If average global temperature rise around2°C, approximately 59% of population in the world would be exposed to water shortage (Rockstrom et al 2009) Vietnam is the countries predicted the most affected severely by climate change due to its long coastlines, the high concentration of population and economic activity in coastal areas, and a heavy reliance on agriculture, natural resources and forestry (Adger 1999) The impacts of climate change such as typhoons, floods, prolonged droughts and sea level rise, EDESUS Conference Proceeding (57 of 1531) would increase risks to properties, livelihood and urban infrastructure assets (MONRE 2012) Phanrang-Thapcham is the coastal urban of the Ninhthuan province which is often affected by natural disasters and predicted severely affected by climate change in the coming decades Recently, droughts and water resources depletion have frequently occurred which severely affected in agriculture, aquaculture, urban water supply, environment Moreover, the frequent heavy rains and floods are greatly damaged the urban and its surroundings Salinity intrusion, bank erosion, and coastal erosion are also severely impacts on these areas All consequences have negatively affected on urban development (NinhThuan PPC 2012) Vulnerability is a term commonly used to describe a weakness in a system; its susceptibility to a specific threat and harmful event This concept is used across different fields which are often location or sector specific A variety of definitions of vulnerability have been proposed in the climate change literature (Ribot 1995) The most common use is that vulnerability is a function of the exposure and sensitivity of a system to a hazard, and the ability to adapt to the impacts of the hazard (Brooks et al 2005) From a social point of view, vulnerability can be considered as the exposure of people to livelihood stress causes by impacts of environmental change or climate extremes (Kelly 2004) As such, vulnerability can be the combination of social factors and environmental risk (Adger 2006) Vulnerability in the context of climate change is basically known as a function of biophysical and socioeconomic factors (O’Brien et al 2007) Vulnerability is also a function of the character, magnitude, rate of climate variation and variation to which a system is exposed, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to climate change (McCarthy 2001) According to the IPCC, vulnerability to climate change is defined as the degree to which a system is susceptible to, and unable to cope with negative effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes (Adger 2007) The definition of the IPCC is criticized too vague and the resulting difficulty in making it operational (Hinkel 2011) But the definition could be considered as an integrative concept that can link the social and biophysical dimensions of environmental change (Turner 2003) The general aim of this study is to calculate the vulnerability index of urban development to climate changes, to establish to what extent the urban assets are vulnerable and identify the major risks and levels of stress it faces with regard to resource stress, development pressure, and management capacity These are essential components for computing vulnerability index in the region The results should provide decision-makers with options to evaluate the current situation, modify existing policies, and implement adaptation and mitigation measures for sustainable water resources management in the study area EDESUS Conference Proceeding (58 of 1531) Figure Map of Phan Rang - Thap Cham city and surroundings Methodology Vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to and adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extreme events The vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate change and variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity V = f (E, S, AC) Of which Exposure (E): Exposure is the extent to which a system is exposed to the climate change E depends on the threats (threat intensity, frequency, duration) and location of the system with respect to the threat (how far from systems to threats) Sensitivity (S): Sensitivity is the degree to which exposure to a threat arising from CC will negatively affect the operation of the system S may be influenced by the integrity of assets under threats and related factors Figure Framework for vulnerability assessment (IPCC.2007) EDESUS Conference Proceeding (59 of 1531) Adaptive capacity (AC): is a measure of the potential, ability, or opportunities available to decrease exposure or sensitivity of a system to a climate-induced stress 2.1 Set up indicator set Table The indicator set of the exposure (E), sensitivity (S) and adaptive capacity (AC) Indicator No Sub-indicator Expose Flood depth Frequency Explain It is flood depth (m) It is classified into five categories from Very Low to Very High It reflects the number of flood events in a year It is the percentage of affected areas in a commune/ward Percentage of It is classified into five categories: Very High (>30%), affected areas High (10-30%), Medium (5-10%), Low (2-5%) and Very Low (