The precise and reliable simulation of hydrologic and hydraulic processes is important for efficient flood forecasting and warning. The study proposes a real-time flood forecasting system which integrates a coupled hydrological-hydraulic modeling system, weather station network, and stream gauges in a web-based visualization environment. An automated procedure was developed for linking dynamically terrestrial rainfall-runoff processes and river hydraulics by coupling the SWAT hydrological model and the HEC–RAS hydraulic model. The flood forecasting system was trialed in the Vu Gia – Thu Bon river basin, Quang Nam province, Vietnam. The results showed good statistical correlation between predicted and measured stream flow for a 10-year calibration period (R² = 0.95, NSI = 0.95, PBIAS = −1.54) and during the following 10-year validation period as well (R² = 0.93, NSI = 0.93, PBIAS = 6.18). A close-up analysis of individual storm events indicated that the magnitude and timing of peak floods were accurately predicted in 2015 (R² = 0.88, NSI = 0.69, PBIAS = 4.50) and 2016 (R² = 0.80, NSI = 0.93, PBIAS = 6.18). In addition, the automated procedure was demonstrated to be reliable with dependable computational efficiency of less than 5 minutes processing time.

Soil and water loss is a severe environmental problem in tropical and subtropical Asia (TSA). This review systematically summarizes the techniques that have been widely applied in the TSA region and compares the conservation efficiency of these techniques based on the runoff and sediment reduction ratios (η_r and η_s). The results show that the current techniques can be divided into biological, engineering and agricultural practice measures, and in most cases, their efficiencies in reducing sediment loss (η_s = 14.0–99.5%, 61.3–100.0% and 0.6–95.4%, respectively) were higher than in reducing runoff loss (η_r = 2.8–9.38%, 0.28–83.3% and 1.62–70.2%, respectively). Monocultures of single tree species (e.g., Pinus massoniana) sometimes showed very limited conservation effects. Vetiver and alfalfa were more effective at reducing soil loss than other hedgerow species. Contour tillage, ridge farming, and reduced tillage generally showed high efficiencies in reducing soil loss compared with other agricultural practice measures. The combination of engineering and biological techniques could more effectively reduce soil and water loss compared with the application of these techniques along. Future works should be conducted to build unified technical standards and reasonable comprehensive evaluation systems, to combine these techniques with environmental engineering technologies, and to develop new amendment materials.

Future projections of anthropogenic climate change play a pivotal role in devising viable countermeasures to address climate-related risks. This study strove to construct future daily rainfall and maximum and minimum temperature scenarios in Vu Gia Thu Bon river basin by employing the Statistical DownScaling Model (SDSM). The model performance was evaluated by utilizing a Taylor diagram with dimensioned and dimensionless statistics. During validation, all model-performance measures show good ability in simulating extreme temperatures and reasonable ability for rainfall. Subsequently, a set of predictors derived from HadCM3 and CanESM2 was selected to generate ensembles of each climatic variables up to the end of 21st century. The generated outcomes exhibit a consistent increase in both extreme temperatures under all emission scenarios. The greatest changes in maximum and minimum temperature were predicted to increase by 2.67–3.9 °C and 1.24–1.96 °C between the 2080s and reference period for the worst-case scenarios. Conversely, there are several discrepancies in the projections of rainfall under different emission scenarios as well as among considered stations. The predicted outcomes indicate a significant decrease in rainfall by approximately 11.57%–17.68% at most stations by 2099. Moreover, all ensemble means were subjected to the overall and partial trend analysis by applying the Innovative-Şen trend analysis method. The results exhibit similar trend patterns, thereby indicating high stability and applicability of the SDSM. Generally, it is expected that these findings will contribute numerous valuable foundations to establish a framework for the assessment of climate change impacts at the river basin scale.

Vu Gia-Thu Bon (VGTB) river basin is an area where flash flood and heavy flood events occur frequently, negatively impacting the local community and socio-economic development of Quang Nam Province. In recent years, structural and non–structural solutions have been implemented to mitigate damages due to floods. However, under the impact of climate change, natural disasters continue to happen unpredictably day by day. It is, therefore, necessary to develop a spatial decision support system for real-time flood warnings in the VGTB river basin, which will support in ensuring the area’s socio-economic development. The main purpose of this study is to develop an online flood warning system in real-time based on Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies, GIS, telecommunications, and modeling (Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System (HEC–RAS)) in order to support the local community in the vulnerable downstream areas in the event of heavy rainfall upstream. The structure of the designed system consists of these following components: (1) real-time hydro-meteorological monitoring network, (2) IoT communication infrastructure (Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), wireless networks), (3) database management system (bio-physical, socio-economic, hydro-meteorological, and inundation), (4) simulating and predicting model (SWAT, HEC–RAS), (5) automated simulating and predicting module, (6) flood warning module via short message service (SMS), (7) WebGIS, application for providing and managing hydro-meteorological and inundation data, and (8) users (citizens and government officers). The entire operating processes of the flood warning system (i.e., hydro-meteorological data collecting, transferring, updating, processing, running SWAT and HEC–RAS, visualizing) are automated. A complete flood warning system for the VGTB river basin has been developed as an outcome of this study, which enables the prediction of flood events 5 h in advance and with high accuracy of 80%.

This study analyzed spatial and temporal patterns of rainfall time series from 14 proportionally distributed stations in Ho Chi Minh City for the period 1980–2016. Both parametric and nonparametric approaches, specifically, linear regression, the Mann–Kendall test and Sen's slope estimator, were applied to detect and estimate the annual and seasonal trends after using original and notched boxplots for the preliminary interpretation. The outcomes showed high domination of positive trends in the annual and seasonal rainfall time series over the 37-year period, but most statistically significant trends were observed in the dry season. The results of trend estimation also indicated higher increasing rates of rainfall in the dry season compared to the rainy season at most stations. Even though the total amount of annual rainfall is mainly contributed by rainfall during the rainy season, the pronounced increment in the dry season can be a determining factor of possible changes in annual rainfall. Additionally, the interpolated results revealed a consistently increasing trend in the southeastern parts of the study area (i.e., Can Gio district), where annual rainfall was by far the lowest intensity compared to other regions.