Due to rapid climatic and socio-economic changes, flood risk is increasing in coastal megacities such as Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Vietnam. Hence, to alleviate such hindrances, there is a strong need to implement effective risk-based adaptation solutions. Within the scope of the German-Vietnamese project DECIDER “Decisions for the Design of Adaptation Pathways and the Integrative Development, Evaluation and Governance of Flood Risk Mitigation Strategies in Changing Urban-rural Systems”, partners aim to create an integrated assessment of future risk trends at the interface of climate change impacts, urban growth, and socio-economic upheaval as well as a comparative assessment of potential measures for flood risk reduction. The interdisciplinary project is coordinated by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) - Department für Geographie, and conducted by German project partners from science (Ludwig Franzius Institute, Leibniz University Hannover; Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne; German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ), Potsdam; University of Tübingen) and practice (plan + risk consult (p+r), Dortmund, THINK - Thuringian Institute for Sustainability and Climate Protection GmbH, Jena, WTM Engineers International GmbH, Hamburg), in addition to Vietnamese project partners from science (Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), Vietnam; Southern Institute for Water Resources Research (SIWRR), Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC); Southern Institute of Social Sciences (SISS), HCMC; Viet Nam National University; University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH), HCMC; Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), Hanoi;  University of Economics and Law (UEL), HCMC) and in practice (Public and Environment Target CO, LTD (EPT), HCMC).

The GFZ Hydrology Section is responsible for work package 5: “Flood vulnerability and impacts”. In this work package, a multi-variable probabilistic flood loss model will be developed and validated for residential buildings. Utilizing the results from other work packages together with the results from the developed flood loss model enables the partners to generate risk maps for different flood scenarios at HCMC. In the final step, the results will be integrated to evaluate different adaptation solutions and inform the decision-makers during the planning phase. More information on the project can be found at https://www.decider-project.org/.