System dynamics approach for understanding scheme of Community-Based Adaptation to flooding: The case of a flood-prone district in Vietnamese urban city

ABSTRACT

Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) scheme gives us an insight into how people confront different issues at the community scale. In the context of flooding, it is recognized that there is a remarkable need for analyzing the dynamic characteristics of the CBA scheme, from which we can observe how flood-related factors interact and influence one another. This paper applies the System Dynamics (SD) approach to give a visual demonstration by modeling a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) of the factors. District 8 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is a case study for the implementation of SD for a better understanding of the links and dependencies between the factors collected from historical experience, a questionnaire survey, and an in-depth interview. The interacting parts identified include characteristics of the location, hard measures of local dwellers, and actions of local authorities. The SD model addresses conflicts among adaptation measures explained by reinforcing loops and expressing an unsustainable way of tackling urban floods in the existing scheme at the study location.

KEYWORDS:

• System dynamics
• Community-Based Adaptation
• urban flooding
• Ho Chi Minh City
• Vietnam

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on the research and data collection that were conducted as part of the project entitled “Research on proposing housing models to minimize the impacts of floods in Ho Chi Minh City. Case study of District 8,” funded by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), Vietnam, through the Vietnamese-German University (VGU). For this project, Le Thi Thu Huong is the principal investigator, and Tran Quang Dao is one of the research members. We would like to thank MoET, VGU, all members of the project, as well as local authorities and households who provided us with sufficient data and information.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

¹ For conducting questionnaires, the sample size of 100 households is chosen according to the time allowed and budget approved for the project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), Vietnam [MOET04/HĐCN/VGU].