Assessment of Flood Disaster Risk in the Lancang–Mekong Region

Abstract

The Lancang–Mekong Region encompasses six countries, covering an area exceeding five million square kilometers and containing a population of more than 400 million. Floods in this region may cause extremely serious losses of lives and property. However, due to the severe shortage of flood disaster data, loss data and meteorological monitoring data, the assessment of flood disaster risks in this region remains highly formidable. In view of this, we systematically integrated the flood disaster data from EM-DAT (the Emergency Events Database), Desinventar (a disaster information management system), Reliefweb (a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), and ADRC (the Asian Disaster Reduction Center), coupled with GLDAS (Global Land Data Assimilation System) precipitation data and the population and economic data from the World Bank, and comprehensively considered vulnerability, exposure, and loss criteria to assess the flood disaster risks in the Lancang–Mekong Region. The research findings are as follows: (1) From 1965 to 2017, a total of 370 floods occurred in the Lancang–Mekong Region, among which the proportion of floods in Vietnam and Thailand combined was as high as 43.7%. In contrast, the number of floods in Qinghai and Tibet in China was relatively small, with a combined proportion of only 1.89%. (2) When mild flood disasters occur, the southern part of Myanmar, the western part of Thailand, and the northeastern part of Vietnam are faced with relatively large loss threats; when moderate flood disasters occur, the central part of Myanmar, the eastern part of Cambodia, and the southern part of Vietnam are faced with comparatively large loss threats; when severe flood disasters occur, high-loss areas are mainly concentrated in the southern part of Vietnam. (3) Considering exposure, vulnerability, and hazards comprehensively, the high-risk areas of floods in the Lancang–Mekong Region are mainly distributed in the central–southern part of Myanmar, the northeastern part of Vietnam, and the southern part of the area bordering Cambodia and Vietnam; the medium-risk areas are mainly distributed in the central part of Thailand and the eastern part of Sichuan in China; relatively speaking, other areas in the Lancang–Mekong Region have a lower flood risk level. This research can provide references for flood risk assessment in regions with scarce data and technical support for flood disaster prevention and control as well as risk management in the Lancang–Mekong Region.