Vietnam faces reservoir safety risks from extreme weather

Extreme rainfall and flooding are creating new safety requirements for Vietnam's reservoir and dam infrastructure. According to the Department of Construction and Water Resources Management, there are currently 6,734 reservoirs in the country, including four particularly important ones managed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development: Cua Dat, Ngan Truoi, Ta Trach, and Dau Tieng.

Management and operation face significant challenges due to increasingly intense and unpredictable weather patterns. Key limitations include a low density of specialized meteorological and hydrological monitoring stations and insufficient telecommunications coverage in many areas, which hinders the transmission of automated data. Consequently, operators often rely on broad regional forecasts that may not accurately reflect rainfall levels within specific river basins.

Furthermore, many medium and small reservoirs built between the 1970s and 1980s lack regular maintenance. Technical documentation is often incomplete or lost, and siltation has reduced the actual capacity of several structures. These factors, combined with limited management capacity at the local level, increase the risk of dam failure during extreme weather events.