Project duration: 01 March 2006 - March 2008
Budget: USD 100,000.

Project Goal

PROMISE is a regional program implemented by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center that aims to minimize the destructive impacts of hydro-meteorological events on vulnerable urban communities and economic infrastructure through enhanced preparedness and mitigation. The main goal of PROMISE is to reduce vulnerability of urban communities through enhanced preparedness and mitigation of hydro-meteorological disasters in South Asia through:

• Adopting specific hydro-meteorological disaster preparedness and mitigation measures to manage hydro-meteorological disaster risk by stakeholders in targeted cities;
  
• Increasing stakeholder involvement and further enhancement of strategies, tools and methodologies related to community preparedness and mitigation of hydro-meteorological disasters in urban communities;
  
• Enhanced coordination with USAID Missions to promote sustainability and ensure program activities accord with USAID country and regional strategies.
  
• Strengthen networks and regional links among relevant risk management institutions/organizations for improving potential and capacity for application and dissemination of lessons learned.

	From 2005 to 2008, the program has five demonstration cities implementing its approach: Chittagong (Bangladesh), Hyderabad (Pakistan), Dagupan (Philippines), Kalutara (Sri Lanka) and Da Nang (Viet Nam).  The selected cities are among the most vulnerable secondary cities subjected to hydro-meteorological events in recent history.  They are rapidly urbanizing and have the potential to be severely affected by natural disasters in the future.
Cam Le district area		Cam Le district area

VietNam :

VietNam is a stretch of land along Indochina peninsula and belongs to Southeast Asian sub-region. Vietnam shares its inland border of about 3,730 km, with People's Republic of China , Lao PDR and Cambodia. Vietnam covers relatively complicated terrain: countless mountains, numerous rivers, and stretching and meandering coastline. Its territory covers 2,860 small and large rivers with total flow of about 867 billion m 3 per year. The Red and Mekong rivers are two major and the most important of all. The population of Vietnam is around 85 million. The proportion of male and female populations is 49% and 51% respectively. 20% of the population lives in urban areas. Rate of population increase is slated to reach 1.16% by year 2005. Though frequently affected by natural disasters, the production of agriculture, forestry and aqua culture still grows stably at a rate of 3.5-4%.

The share of agriculture, forestry and aqua culture production in GDP is the smallest; however, has a very important impact on social security, particularly on the livelihood of more than 70% of the national workforce. Natural Disasters in VietNam lies in tropical region, which is meeting place of many atmosphere blocks resulting from continent and ocean and influenced by its location in relation to equator.

Therefore tropical climate of Vietnam deeply suffers from monsoon regime prevailing in Asia , mainly northeast and southeast monsoons. There are about 100 rainy days effecting different parts of Vietnam , with total amount of rainfall of 1500 – 2000 mm per year. Situated in the tropical monsoon zone close to the typhoon centre of the Western pacific, Vietnam experiences many climate variations resulting frequent hydro-meteorological hazard events.

Storms, typhoons, floods, landslides and, paradoxically droughts, are hazards that the people of VietNam face on an annual basis due to the geographical location of the country. The causes of hydro-meteorological disasters are numerous. Many are natural occurrences, such as monsoon storms that bring storms, typhoons and flooding; or hot seasonal winds that bring drought and fire. But the effects of these natural hazard based disasters have been seriously compounded by man made environmental degradation, poor watershed management, rapid population growth, industrialization, urbanization and resettlement programs undertaken in more marginalized lands. Currently, 70% of the people in Vietnam live in areas that are subject to floods and storms. For many regions of the country repeated disasters severely hamper efforts of economic development and cause a continuing cycle of poverty.

Safer house model built

Central Vietnam , Danang city:

Danang city is located in Central VietNam , which is a long-stretching narrow region. The area is frequently subjected to flood and storm disaster events. Storms, affecting the Central provinces , often originate from tropical storms and depressions coming from the South China Sea (East Sea), and from tropical and cold fronts. Severe storms with strong wind are often engaged with heavy rains, causing river water level rising and flooding.

City of Danang is situated in the center of the country, on the north–south trans–national communication network and the East–West trans–Asia road linking with central Laos , northeast Cambodia and northeast Thailand . It is located in a typical tropical area influenced by monsoons with an annual average temperature of 25.7 o C. The city has a natural land area of 1,256km 2 and a population of 816,831 in 2004. It consists of five urban districts, one rural district and one archipelago district.

Danang City is an important communications hub of the central region, Western Highlands and Vietnam with its international airport, deep-water seaports and north-south land routes and railways completely and conveniently developed. This region is close to international shipping routes, very important for the establishment of convenient cargo transit sites for the markets in Indochina and Southeast Asia . The central government has focused on developing this Key Economic Zone in order to make the best use of its location, potentials and advantages to be one of the dynamically developed areas of the country.

Disasters affecting Danang city :

Flood and drought are common phenomena in Cam Le district (project implementation area) and usually occur each year. Floodwaters bring in alluvial soil and clear the harmful elements for agriculture production, thus increasing yields and reducing the cost of pesticides and fertilizers. At the same time, floods, which occur 1-2 times per year, affect negatively the low-lying areas in DaNang.

Drought is considered the major threat to the local agriculture. Lack of fresh water supply for rice cultivation reduces the yield of summer crop from 30% to 100%.  Drought also increases the risk of fire in the residential areas, since most of the houses and accommodation facilities of are made of bamboo/wood. Coastal communities are also prone to storm and tropical low pressures. Although they are rarer than flood and drought, the area has been affected by two major storms in the past ten years. River and sea erosion are other threats, which need to be taken into account for the disaster management planning in Danang.

Delivery of emergency facilities

Table 2: Disaster Occurrence, Frequency and Impact in Danang

Expected Results

Project Purpose

“ Increased adoption of private and public sector mechanisms for community preparedness and mitigation of hydro-meteorological disaster risk in urban areas of Vietnam which would measurably alleviate human suffering, prevent loss of life, and reduce the potential of physical and economic damage ”.

Project Partners

PROMISE Vietnam project is implemented by CECI and the main partner for the implementation of the activities is The People's Committee of Cam Le district (PC of Cam Le) in Danang city. So, PC of Cam Le closely collaborates PROMISE project to provide technical advice on Disaster management and programs of the district in accordance with planned programs and priorities of Viet Nam Government. PROMISE is funded by the US Agency for International Development – Office for US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Asian Disaster Preparedness Center ( ADPC) is responsible for the strategic orientation and overall quality of results for the project in accordance with the contribution agreement signed with the USAID- ADPC and CECI and the broad objectives of the Fund.

PROMISE partners diagram