Coastal erosion monitoring by remote sensing technology

On October 12, 2021, the Department of National Remote Sensing held a workshop to introduce the results of the project “Coastal erosion monitoring in some key areas of Central Vietnam by remote sensing technology”. Representatives of some units: Department of Surveying, Mapping and Geographic Information of Vietnam, Department of Water Resources Management, Department of Climate Change, Department of Information Technology and Natural Resources Data, National Center for Water Resources Planning and Investigation.

Deputy Director of the Department of National Remote Sensing Tran Tuan Ngoc spoke at workshop

Introducing the project results, Mr. Vu Huu Liem, Director of the Center for Monitoring of Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change (Department of National Remote Sensing) provided information that the project “Coastal erosion monitoring in some key areas of Central Vietnam by remote sensing technology” was approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment under Decision No. 3138/QĐ-BTNMT dated December 30, 2016 implemented by Department of National Remote Sensing.

Accordingly, the project was implemented in 18 key areas in the central provinces with the goal of building a database in some key coastal areas that are being strongly eroded. The project aims to provide visual information, quickly update the situation of coastal erosion by remote sensing technology to the management agencies. Thereby, it is possible to monitor in long-term and propose appropriate response solutions to adapt and minimize damages caused by coastal erosion in the context of climate change.

Monitoring coastal erosion by remote sensing technology

During the implementation of the project, the Center for Monitoring of Natural Resources and Environment and Climate Change actively developed detailed technical designs to organize scientific and reasonable construction, ensuring progress and the project was practically completed in 2021. Accordingly, the project has built a coastal erosion monitoring database operated on the basis of remote sensing and geoinformatics technology. In addition, the project proposes a mechanism to operate the system on an annual cycle, a coordination mechanism among management and technical agencies as well as funding to serve the State management of coastal erosion.

According to Mr. Liem, with outstanding advantages compared to other traditional methods, remote sensing technology combined with GIS is the only effective tool in monitoring coastal erosion. With nearly thousands of kilometers of coastline in our country, the application of remote sensing technology and the use of image data sources from existing satellite image stations is an effective solution to obtain basic information on coastal management such as: population, infrastructure and coastal protection works, … making an important contribution to socio-economic development, ensuring security, national defense and sovereignty at sea.

In addition, with the situation of coastal erosion in our country becoming more and more serious and increasing in both scale and intensity, the implementation of this project’s mission is meaningful and socially effective. The results of project will provide accurate information about the shoreline areas with erosion / accretion phenomena, thereby making predictions about the possibility of these phenomena in the future.

The project’s results are assessment reports on causes, detailed databases of objects to be monitored in key coastal areas, and analytical tools, computational models. These have helped the management in preventing and minimizing damages caused by coastal erosion. Moreover, the solid scientific basis and regularly updated data effectively support the formulation of a reasonable coastal development plan in order to adapt to the condition of climate change, which has negative impact on the life of coastal countries like ours today.

At the workshop, the participants highly appreciated the effectiveness of the Project. They believe that the project is a right policy of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in implementing the strategy of the industry and the “Strategy for research and application of space technology until 2020” of the Prime Minister. The monitoring of coastal erosion in the key coastal areas of Central Vietnam by remote sensing technology is an advanced and optimal technical solution in the current technological conditions. In particular, the analysis of past and present shoreline erosion information as well as other relevant information allows the assessment of future erosion trends.

The representatives of units also suggested that the office implementing this project should propose and approve specific tasks of periodical monitoring and supervision of key areas. At the same time, it is necessary to build a monitoring database to update and periodically report on the scale, intensity and risk of coastal erosion, serving the management of natural resources and environment sector.

VidaGIS has extensive experiences in implementing large projects related to GIS, remote sensing, asset management, etc. In which, we are implementing the coastal erosion monitoring project for Project Management Board – Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Vietnam. We carry out the tasks of field investigation, mapping, GIS database integration and remote sensing… The project has contributed effectively to the erosion monitoring objective, especially in Mekong Delta region for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.