Coastal development between opportunity and disaster risk : an assessment of the coastal protection system in Vietnam

This paper provides a high-level assessment of Vietnam's sea dike system and its prescribed dike safety standards. The assessment estimates that 65 percent of the sea dike system does not meet the safety standards and that about $2 billion in capital investment is necessary to meet the standards, mainly in the Red River Delta. It also shows that current safety standards need finetuning, especially in areas with high risk and growth. This paper acts as a technical background paper to the report Resilient Shores: Vietnam's Coastal Development between Opportunity and Disaster Risk (Rentschler et al. 2020).