A view of Cần Thơ City.  Work has begun on the US$322 million Cần Thơ Urban Development and Resilience project to reduce flood risk in the core urban area.— Photo nongnghiep.vn

HCM CITY— Work has begun on the US$322 million Cần Thơ Urban Development and Resilience project to reduce flood risk in the core urban area.

The project will also improve connectivity between the city centre and the new low-risk urban growth areas and enhance the capacity of city authorities to manage possible disasters.

Of the cost, $250 million will come from a World Bank loan while the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs will provide non-refundable aid of $10 million, according to Huỳnh Thanh Sử, director of the city’s official development assistance (ODA) project management authority, who announced the project at a workshop held in the city on Monday. The city will provide the rest.

The project, which ends in 2021, has three components -- flood risk management and environmental sanitation, urban corridor development, and spatial planning platform and financial and social protection instruments.

The objective of the third component is to build management systems to improve spatial planning, data and information management, post-disaster budget execution and the responsiveness of safety nets to flood events.

Along with the effects of climate change, more frequent and severe flooding, drought and storms as well as salinity are significant challenges faced by the region, according to Lưu Đình Hiệp, director of the HCM City University of Technology’s centre for developing information technology and geographic information system.

A new spatial data infrastructure (SDI) platform would improve urban management, monitoring and evaluation of environmental data as well as foster efficient use of natural resources, he said.

"Staff training and educational efforts play an important role in ensuring the system operate effectively," he added.

Võ Hồng Ánh, deputy chairwoman of the city People’s Committee, said the city made huge efforts to upgrade infrastructure and develop various industries.

"But the Mekong Delta is particularly vulnerable to climate change and hydro-meteorological disasters," she said.

The implementation of the SDI platform would help the city develop in a sustainable manner, she said.

The platform will provide a one-stop location for users to visualise, download, analyse and share geospatial data and maps, and link to additional sources at the national, regional and global levels, according to the World Bank. — VNS