Flood inundation assessment of UNESCO World Heritage Sites using remote sensing and spatial metrics in Hoi An City, Vietnam

A new flood risk assessment for Hoi An Ancient Town reveals that over 75% of past flooding incidents occurred in areas identified as high or very high-risk by the study's predictive model. This finding underscores the vulnerability of heritage sites to increasing extreme flood events, driven by both human and climate changes. The research integrates remote sensing data from Sentinel-2, GIS analysis, and landscape ecology metrics to compute a flood risk index using hazard characteristics, exposure, and vulnerability factors. The Fuzzy-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was employed to weight and rank these indices, providing a holistic understanding of inundation risks. The model's accuracy was verified against 330 historical flood locations, highlighting concentrated hotspots within the city's heritage areas. This approach offers actionable insights for risk reduction and management strategies, with potential applications for other UNESCO sites facing similar challenges.

Nguyen, D.-M. T., Do, T.-N., Van Nghiem, S., Ghimire, J., Dang, K.-B., Giang, V.-T., Vu, K.-C., & Pham, V.-M. (2024). Flood inundation assessment of UNESCO World Heritage Sites using remote sensing and spatial metrics in Hoi An City, Vietnam. Ecological Informatics, 79, 102427. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2023.102427