Meet the team!
1 - Vietnam and flooding
Hospitals accommodate 50% of health care visits in Vietnam. So it is important to ensure access to these hospitals.
Vietnam’s road network is well-developed, yet in poor condition. The complete network consists of 222.179 km road, of which only 19% is paved. Congestion and lack of safety bring the average speed to 50km/h.
Yet, Vietnam faces increasingly severe floods. It's the fifth most at risk country in the latest Global Climate Risk Index. Recently Typhoon Damrey resulted in 123 lives and $1bn infrastructure damage. The latter limits access to roads and public service, in particular health care even further.
Vietnam needs to invest in better roads & increase the number of hospitals, but where?
Methodology
In ArcGIS first, we converted the flood risk `.tif` file to polygons to get high-risk areas then used 'intersect' from the overlay analysis tool to extract high-risk network links
Results
Our map shows how the flow risk is distributed over the country. What can be seen is that the flood risk is highest along the coast line and in the river delta close to Ho-Chi-Minh City.
2 - How vulnerable are road segments and hospitals to flooding?
When projecting the flood risk scenario, the accessibility challenge affects not only the roads but also some hospital facilities. More than 64% of hospitals are at risk 5. This risk increases to above 90% when we consider the risks 4 and 5 showing that less than 10% of the health care facilities will be accessible if such a situation occurs. The most vulnerable facilities are located in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and some urban areas along the coast. This results suggests that due to the high level of urbanization, the infiltration rate is reduced. In addition, the southern provinces are the delta region of the Mekong river and therefore exposed to shallow groundwater levels.
Methodology
We cross-referenced the flood risk attribute of area polygons in ArcGIS with the road network and the location of each hospital in Vietnam. In ArcGIS, we used the `intersect` from the overlay analysis tool to get the high-risk roads which is the overlap in the road network and flood risk layers.
Results
Our map shows how the flow risk is distributed over the country. What can be seen is that the flood risk is highest along the coast line and in the river delta close to Ho-Chi-Minh City.
3 - What is the impact of flooding on hospital accessibility?
When projecting the flood risk scenario, the accessibility challenge affects not only the roads but also some hospital facilities. More than 64% of hospitals are at risk 5. This risk increases to above 90% when we consider the risks 4 and 5 showing that less than 10% of the health care facilities will be accessible if such a situation occurs. The most vulnerable facilities are located in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and some urban areas along the coast. This results suggests that due to the high level of urbanization, the infiltration rate is reduced. In addition, the southern provinces are the delta region of the Mekong river and therefore exposed to shallow groundwater levels.
Methodology
"We used network analysis (more precisely, we used the shortest path algorithm) to determine which hospitals are within different distance classes of the population nodes, taking into account the fact that certain roads may be unaccessible during floods. The heatmaps indicate the different accessibilities for the different scenarios."
Results
We displayed results from three scenarios. From left-to-right: no floods scenario, level 4 & 5 inaccessible, level 2, 3, 4 & 5 inaccessible.
4 - What is the risk of being cut off completely from health services?
We also plotted histograms of the travel distance distribution to the nearest hospital. Here you can see similar dynamics compared to the previous spatial analysis maps. In the "completed flooded" scenario many people need to travel farther.
Methodology
We classified the distances into different distance classes, 0 being 0km, 1 being 0-1km and so on. Throughout the scenarios a shift in the distribution can be clearly deducted, indicating that the accessibility is decreasing, with the increasing severity of floods"
Results
We displayed results from three scenarios. From left-to-right: no floods scenario, level 4 & 5 inaccessible, level 2, 3, 4 & 5 inaccessible.
5 - Recommendations for future work
Giving future projections and uncertainties, there is a need for Vietnam to fill the gap and strive for good accessibility health care facilities. Creating healthcare equality and accessibility for all at all ages remains one of the main SDG objectives and will require a great effort. Although access to these facilities in urban areas is less challenging, the rural areas still struggle a lot within a short distance (only xx% within 5 km distance). Bridging this gap will improve the accessibility to xx% in rural areas. From another perspective, the issues of road networks not being available under flood risk harden accessibility both in rural and urban areas. All together combined with some of these health facilities located in flood-prone areas worsens the situation. In such a context, a general census of all the vulnerable facilities needs to be conducted in order to make them resilient. Regarding future constructions, it is advisable to consider 10 and 20 years projections and keep the health facilities away from flood-prone areas while shortening the distance to the population. A trade-off must be found to improve the health system and make it more sustainable.
1. Build flood protections
a. Protectsall valuables
b. E.g., YenNghia pumping station, close to Hanoi: pumps that can all transport up to 15cubic metres/second
2. Protectroads & hospitals: create a ‘sponge city’:
a. “a spongecity is one that can hold, clean, and drain water in a natural way - using anecological approach.”
b. Permeablepavement, green roofs etc.
3. Elevate roads &hospitals
