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International Seminar on Biodiversity and Sustainable Development in the Mekong River Basin 18

can be categorized as flash floods, gradually rising floods, and stagnant ponding floods. According
to UNISDR (2013), among all hazards, floods are ranked as the most catastrophic socio-economic
disaster in many parts of the world.
Being specific, the communities residing in the Mekong river basin are exposed to multiple
hazards, mostly hydro meteorological and climatological hazards (Few & Tran, 2010). In recent
years, managing these hazards is becoming more challenging. In the last two decades, extreme
hazardous events have caused severe damage to the people, economy, and environment of the
Mekong region. For instance, looking back in 2000, the region experienced one of the worst floods
that took the lives of over 480 people and displaced thousands (Hoang et al., 2018). Similarly,
seasonal floods in Cambodia inundated 423,449 ha of farmland and displaced 1.64 million people
in 2011, directly impacting USD 521 million in economic loss (Liu et al., 2020). Abhishek et al.,
(2021); Chen et al., (2020); Thilakarathne & Sridhar, (2017) show that the exposure of
communities located in the Mekong basin to flood hazards is inclining. Thus, this conceptual paper
discusses innovation and sustainable measures to manage and mitigate the risk of flood to
contribute to the sustainable and resilient development of the greater Mekong region.

Flood Risk Assessment
There is a strong connection between disaster resilience, disaster preparedness, and risk
management. It is imperative to mention that reduction of the community vulnerability eventually
helps to increase resilience. Developing community resilience is a multifaceted approach that
revolves around various elements of vulnerability (Pal et al., 2020, Cavallo and Ireland, 2014).
Disaster preparedness strategies are deployed to mitigate disaster risks and to build community
resilience. However, disasters are characterized by interdependent and systemic risks that can
trigger cascading effects (Lorenz et al., 2009). Flood resilience is a complex system consisting of
multiple processes and is characterized by a significant degree of interdependence between the
processes (Bergstrand et al., 2015).
Risk assessments require more information inputs than the existing hazards information to
accomplish this. The importance of attention to the geographical context should be reflected so
that local knowledge and identity values are incorporated into context-specific government
policies and strategies (Zuccaro et al., 2020). The introduction of new perspectives into
development practice, such as systems thinking and complexity (As shown in figure 1), has been
facilitated by research; however, efforts to standardize metrics have been hindered by conceptual
diversity. As a result, the number of resilience measurement approaches has increased dramatically
in recent years, with many stakeholders struggling to find tools that meet their specific evidence
requirements (Jones et al., 2021). There are significant knowledge gaps, in particular, regarding
the characteristics of disaster-induced disruptions and changes in livelihood assets and resources,
the livelihood strategies adopted by communities during post-disaster reconstruction, and how
local people built livelihood resilience and adapted to hazard. (Uddin et al., 2021).

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