Challenges in flood risk management in urban areas of river deltas in South and South East Asia

This conference will share challenges, knowledge, good practices and experiences on building the resilience of Delta regions to floods and other hydro-meteorological disaster events, particularly in urbanised areas.

It will provide a platform to discuss the current challenges associated with flood and other hydro-meteorological disaster risk management, and find solutions/strategies for risk minimisation by looking at sound practices available in the region and beyond. It will also explore the need for greater regional collaboration and how this might be achieved. For instance to discuss priority actions in risk management, sharing experience and sound practices and identifying strategies for minimising the adverse impacts of disaster risks in the Asian river deltas, in particular in the urban built up areas at a regional level.

The geographic focus will include a number of river delta regions in South and South East Asia including but not exclusively: the Mekong; the Chao Phraya; the Irrawaddy; and the Ganges–Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM).

Key aims:

• understand the factors which trigger an increase in social, economic and environmental impacts due to floods and other hydro-meteorological disaster events in urban areas within river delta areas
• identify vulnerabilities and risks to the urban built environment, infrastructure, food security and livelihoods due to future adverse disaster events; including the potential increase in external factors such as severe weather events as an expected result of changing variability and climate over the deltaic regions, and identify appropriate measures for risk minimization
• discuss existing strategies, good practice and new opportunities for disaster risk management approaches in urban built up areas within river deltas and how these can be applied; for instance through DRR programmes, climate change adaptation programmes, urban risk financing mechanisms, socio-economic development and welfare initiatives
• explore whether greater collaboration about river deltas at a regional level would be beneficial, and if so in what format that might work best
• encourage networking among stakeholders so that the challenges are discussed subsequently and sound practices, solutions and experiences are shared