VIET NAM COUNTRY BRIEF: Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on the Education Sector With a Focus on Tsunami-Prone Areas, Including Multi-Hazards

VIET NAM COUNTRY BRIEF: Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on the Education Sector With a Focus on Tsunami-Prone Areas, Including Multi-Hazards

November 1, 2022

Over the years, Viet Nam has faced many types of disasters, causing great harm to people, property, and infrastructure, along with other serious consequences to the living environment, production, and the economy.

In the past 20 years, disasters have become more difficult to predict in terms of frequency of occurrence, especially phenomena such as super typhoons, heavy rains, floods/droughts, and the like.

Viet Nam is also located on western side of a volcanic belt, and as such must always be on alert for tsunami, which can occur at any time.

Tsunami hazard for the coastal areas of Viet Nam is assessed by the maximum wave height and the time it takes for the tsunami to propagate from the source to the coast. Among the abovementioned nine tsunami sources, the Manila/Philippine deep trench source area is considered the most dangerous for Viet Nam. If an earthquake with a maximum magnitude up to M=9.3 occurs in this area, the coast of Viet Nam risks being exposed to waves as high as 16m (Figure 1), with the central coastal area facing the greatest tsunami danger.

In recent years, the Government of Viet Nam has focused on warning and responding to tsunamis for coastal localities, supporting the development of solutions and evacuation/ action plans for each level of government, local schools, and coastal communities.

In the past two years, Viet Nam has also been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. All fields – including economic sectors, education, and society as a whole – have been affected, requiring timely solutions.

This country brief paper documents the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Viet Nam’s education sector, as well as on selected schools in Quang Nam province where a high level of disaster risk has been measured. At the same time, the government's solutions to disaster risk have been evaluated and analysed, and some solutions have been proposed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.