Identification of 850 rocks and landslides in the northern mountains

In recent years, natural disasters, especially landslides, mud and rock floods have become more frequent and cause serious human and property damage to mountainous areas of Viet Nam.

As assigned by the Government, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has been completing the development of a current situation map (22 provinces) and zoning (15 provinces) of landslide risk for provinces across the country (according to 37 provincial plans). Currently, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is continuing to develop smaller scale maps (1/10,000) for about 200 high-risk communes as a base for installing warning stations on a digital basis, survey for large scale mapping for provinces.

Previously, from 2016 to 2018, the General Department of Disaster Prevention (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) sent technical missions to carry out field surveys in 15 northern mountainous provinces. The survey identified a list of 535 points where flash floods occurred and 850 points of landslides and rocks occurred from 2001-2017. Lao Cai and Son La are the two provinces with the highest number of flash floods.

Survey results on the current status of landslide of the Institute of Geosciences and Mineral Resources of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment also showed that Ban Khoang commune, Sapa district, Lao Cai province is the place where particularly serious landslides appeared. Specifically, at 9pm on September 4, 2013, a mudslide-like landslide caused 14 deaths, 10 houses of people were swept away and destroyed, including 7 houses were swept away, collapsed and 3 houses had broken walls, mud and mud were flooded. Public works including preventive medicine center, Commune people’s committee headquarters, post office and junior high school were flooded with mud, damaging many furniture and equipment.

In 2017, the results of the landslide risk assessment for 200 key mountainous communes in the framework of the Government Project "Survey, assessment and zoning warnings of rock landslides in mountainous areas of Viet Nam" chaired by the Institute also showed similar results.

Actively warn to proactively prevent

In order to take the initiative in prevention in the past time, many localities in the northern mountainous region (such as Hoa Binh, Son La, Hoa Binh Yen Bai, Lao Cai, Quang Ninh, ...) have been actively seeking national support to promote technology transfer, deploy the construction of disaster warning systems.

Particularly, there are potential risks of rock landslides, Ban Khoang commune, Sapa district, the Institute of Geosciences and Mineral Resources, in collaboration with the Department of Land and Water Conservation of Taiwan, studied and installed an integrated system of real-time mud and rock flow early warning devices to help people and local authorities in mitigating damage caused by this type of disaster. This is the first time in Viet Nam, a real-time early warning system for rocks and mudslides in the field has been studied and developed.

Evaluation of the automatic warning system for landslides in Ban Khoang commune, Sa Pa district (Lao Cai), Dr. Tran Quang Hoai, Deputy Head of the Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention (PCTT), the Director General of the General Department of Information and Communications believes that, after completion, the system will promote effectiveness in early warning of natural disasters.

However, on the basis of the initial operation, the units managing and operating the system need to summarize, learn from experience and expand the model so that they can alert quickly and accurately to the people but in accordance with Vietnam's economic conditions. "In order to maximize the effectiveness of prevention and control of flash floods and landslides, it is necessary to continue to build a real-time disaster warning system based on continuous observation data," said Dr. Tran Quang Hoai said.