Ongoing works in Southern Vietnam: Italian technology for the expansion of the hydrometric and pluviometric network in real time

The “Vietnam Managing Natural Hazards Project” (VN-Haz) is a very wide project funded by the World Bank that aims at developing the population's resilience, as well as allocating economic resources to face natural hazards in some specific river basins. 

This project aims at increasing the efficacy in the disaster risk management and it is composed of 5 different elements. The second element is to strengthen hydro meteorological forecasting and alerting systems. On the whole, the purpose is to help in reaching the goals established by the "National Strategy for Natural Disaster Prevention, Response and Mitigation Towards 2020”, approved by the Government of Vietnam.

Strengthening the forecasting and alerting systems is possible through the expansion and development of the hydro meteorological monitoring network run by the Southern Regional Hydro Meteorological Center. A significant part of this project was carried out by CAE in 2012.

The public call for tenders was directed to Vietnamese firms only and the works were let out on contract to a historical partner in Vietnam of CAE. The works include the supplying and installation of 43 new stations equipped with automatic hydrometers and rain gauges, GPRS connected to the Ho Chi Minh City Regional Centre. In these departments, that share data with the relevant Provincial Centres, it will be possible to get to know the evolution of natural phenomena in real time.

Thanks to this project, the "Made in Italy" automatic hydrometric and pluviometric stations installed in the Mekong Delta will increase from the current 101 to 144, as it is provided in the original project. In order to give a complete picture of the situation, it is right to add the 12 meteorological stations installed in the same geographic area that have been operating in as many Provincial Centres since 2012. 

Apart from increasing the number of measurement points, for the first time this implementation will allow us to export to Vietnam some of the latest technologies developed by CAE. For example, these technologies include Mhaster dataloggers - with an “OpenLog” configuration setting, as it is required for this project - and LPR radar hydrometers. All the above mentioned solutions are in the van as far as their precision, interoperability, open access and robustness.