Risk Management and Spatial Planning – Understanding Rapid Urbanization in Climate Change

  • In the emerging mega-urban regions of Southeast Asia, both planned and unplanned urbanisation into flood prone areas appears to be an unavoidable consequence of socio-economic development. These risks occur, often not due to a lack of risk awareness or weak planning instruments, but seem to be an accepted consequence of maintaining current economic success and social progress. Flood risk protection and implementation of costly mitigation measures are often shifted to a future development cycle, where implementation is not seen to constrain the economic goals. Asian cities located in deltaic settings such as Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Vietnam, exhibit higher exposure levels to flood risk primary as a result of their location, their low elevation and if located in tropical regions, the significant annual variations in climatic and weather extremes they incur, so that a compelling need for dedicated site specific risk assessment and urban planning arises. Disasters like the recent flood in Bangkok in 2011 have shown that this developmentIn the emerging mega-urban regions of Southeast Asia, both planned and unplanned urbanisation into flood prone areas appears to be an unavoidable consequence of socio-economic development. These risks occur, often not due to a lack of risk awareness or weak planning instruments, but seem to be an accepted consequence of maintaining current economic success and social progress. Flood risk protection and implementation of costly mitigation measures are often shifted to a future development cycle, where implementation is not seen to constrain the economic goals. Asian cities located in deltaic settings such as Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Vietnam, exhibit higher exposure levels to flood risk primary as a result of their location, their low elevation and if located in tropical regions, the significant annual variations in climatic and weather extremes they incur, so that a compelling need for dedicated site specific risk assessment and urban planning arises. Disasters like the recent flood in Bangkok in 2011 have shown that this development strategy cannot be justified any longer, especially in the times of a changing climate. Associated economic losses and social implications are simply too high. Our results are an outcome of a 5 year research project in HCMC funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, focused on developing adaptation options to climate risks that could then be subsequently implemented into the existing land-use planning framework. Based on the development of core indicators describing future urban structural changes in relation to the changing patterns of risk exposures, spatially explicit planning recommendations were compiled in close cooperation with the responsible city authorities. Our contribution focuses on how to overcome the current limitations in implementing scientifically-founded and evidence-based adaptation planning to flood risks by communicating the importance in realising the present and plausible opportunities to influence future urban land-use.show moreshow less

Export metadata

Additional Services

Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author: Harry Storch, Nigel K. Downes
URL:http://programm.corp.at/cdrom2013/papers2013/CORP2013_226.pdf
ISBN:978-3-9503110-5-1
Title of the source (English):Proceedings, REAL CORP 2013, Planning Times
Publisher:CORP
Place of publication:Schwechat, Austria
Editor: Manfred Schrenk, Vasily V. Popovich, Peter Zeile, Pietro Elisei
Document Type:Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Year of publication:2013
First Page:1327
Last Page:1333
Faculty/Chair:Fakultät 2 Umwelt und Naturwissenschaften / FG Umweltplanung
Institution name at the time of publication:Fakultät für Umweltwissenschaften und Verfahrenstechnik (eBTU) / LS Umweltplanung
Einverstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.