Unveiling flood vulnerability in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: A case study of an Giang province

Flood risk management is a critical concern worldwide, as communities and regions face increasing threats of flooding due to climate change, urbanization, and natural variability. As a headwater province of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, An Giang is considered the most vulnerable to the impacts of floods. We thus applied a flood assessment framework that combines natural disaster (floods), economic, social, environmental factors with a set of 42 criteria in terms of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. The Analytic Hierarchy Process method was used to weight these criteria before flood risk maps were made to assess their scales. Our results revealed that Khanh An and Long Binh communes, primarily located in An Phu District at the border between Vietnam and Cambodia, are at the highest hazard levels with scores of 0.68. Tinh Bien District where is relatively far from An Phu, although not heavily inundated, has a high level of vulnerability. Overall, 10 out of the 155 communes in the province (6.5%) were at high flood risk since these communes, mostly located in An Phu, have predominantly agricultural areas with a relatively poor population. In addition, 121 communes (78%) demonstrated a moderate flood risk level while the rest (15.5%) is very low or not at any risk. Mitigation measures should be developed to reduce flood risk across the province within the VMD context while this study sheds light to worldwide deltas on developing similar methods for flood risk management.