Resilient transport systems to reduce urban vulnerability to floods in emerging-coastal cities: A case study of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

The role of transportation is becoming ever more important as cities are spatially expanded along with urban development, yet highly agglomerated by complex activities over their geographic territory. Flooding incidents in cities across the world have exposed the vulnerability of transport networks which can result in significant, lasting disruption. This appears to be overlooked in emerging-coastal cities, especially prone to flooding as plans for transport development, are ultimately driven by economic drivers resulting in uncontrolled urbanisation. By using a combined method of hydrological flood modeling and GIS analysis, this paper demonstrates the increasing vulnerability of the transport system in Ho Chi Minh City based on current plans for transport development. The paper highlights the need to consider a new approach to transport planning and advocates the application of a Resilient Transport System (RTS) which can be integrated into potential revisions of city master plans to help Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) shift from resistance to resilience to extreme floods. The focal point of the concept is the spatial transfer of transport flows based on a pre-organised structural and flexible transport system constituted by links, nodes and relevant services in terms of different levels of elevation and locations. The intrinsic value of its application to the transport plan is that a city can retain a certain capacity (probably on a smaller scale) of its transport system in order to mitigate potential impacts on urban activities resulting from flood disruptions.