VietFlood

Overview 

Vietnam is one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. Floods have caused extensive damage to infrastructure, significant losses in the agriculture and fisheries sectors, as well as a large number of fatalities. According to Vietnam’s Emergency Events Database (EMDAT) floods alone affected 35 million people between 1960 and 2006. As a result, Vietnam has been identified as one of the top 15 countries in the world already vulnerable to natural hazards like drought and storms in terms of number of people and scale of exposure. 

Being located in the South China Sea, the country is part of a tropical monsoon sea belt and receives torrential rain ranging from 1200 to 3000 mm a year. Furthermore, nearly 90% of those precipitations occur during the summer. In addition to the monsoon rains are 6 to 8 storms hitting the coast every. The combination of the typhoon and the monsoon seasons leads to the food season which starts in July and ends in November. Moreover, climate change is expected to bring increased disasters to Vietnam in the form of typhoons, cyclones, floods and droughts. Approximately 10 percent of Vietnam’s population and GDP is expected to be impacted if sea-level were to rise by one metre. Despite the huge impact of floods on the Vietnamese population, almost nothing is known about Vietnamese household’s Willigness To Pay (WTP) for flood risk reduction also this is a key information for an efficient design of any public flood management policy. IREEDs research aims at filling this gap. 

This project builds on three strands of the literature in environmental economics. The first one refers to the economic evaluation of non-market goods. The second to the more recent literature on the Value of Statistical Life (VSL). Finally, the project contributes to the literature on flood insurance demand in a developing country.

Scientific Outcomes

• A. Reynaud , MH Nguyen, C. Aubert, Is there a demand for flood insurance in Vietnam? Results from a choice experiment , Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, 2018.
• A. Reynaud , MH Nguyen, Valuing Flood Risk Reductions, Environmental Modelling & Assessment, Springer, 2016. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10666-016-9500-z
• A. Reynaud , MH Nguyen, C. Aubert, Living with floods: Flood Protective behaviours and Flood Risk Perception of Vietnam Households,  VIETFLOOD working paper n° 1, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance – Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 38(3), pages 547-579, July.