Development the criteria for saline intrusion vulnerability assessment and appilication for downstream of red – thai binh river basin, vietnam

Abstract

Vietnam is one of the countries is affected of saline intrusion due to strongly tide and sea level rise. Beside the reduction of discharge from upstream, the sea water level tends to increase, changing of topography, meteorological factors and human impact are also the cause of stronger saline intrusion. In Vietnam, a large number of studies determined the ranges of saline intrusion in Red-Thai Binh river basin but the number of study to assessing the vulnerability due to the saline intrusion is very limited. In order to improve the response and mitigation plans, the vulnerability assessment with the specific factors should be considering and analyzing based on the socio-economic and environment conditions. Therefore, this paper proposes a integrated indicator to assess the vulnerability due to saline intrusion with 18 variables based on the analysis and synthesis of the impacts of saline intrusion on people, socioeconomic activities and environment. The weighting factor of each criterion / variable was determined based on the AHP (Analysis Hierarchy Process) method with the consultation from experts and managers in water management organizations. Based on the statistics data, field surveyed and interviewed in Nam Dinh and Thai Binh province, this paper has provided initial results on vulnerability due to saline intrusion for communes in these provinces.