Authors

Trang Do, Milka Vincentiya, Srishti Ananya

Research Question

How can publicly available environmental, spatial and demographic data be integrated into a decision-support model that identifies urban heat and air-pollution hotspots and helps prioritize investments in Viet Nam's cities? The project explores how a transparent, reproducible framework can support urban resilience planning, future risk scenarios and the comparison of intervention options.

Background

Urban heat and air pollution seriously affect public health, quality of life, economic productivity and climate resilience in Viet Nam's fast-growing cities. UNDP research in Ha Noi in 2025 found that 94% of surveyed outdoor workers report heat-related health impacts, with associated income losses and adaptation costs.

Local authorities recognize these risks, but planning decisions are constrained by fragmented data, limited analytical tools, and the difficulty of combining different sources of evidence. Viet Nam's digital transformation agenda aims to strengthen data-informed, citizen-centered decision-making, creating an opportunity to show how integrated data can support more transparent planning. The methodology could later be adapted to secondary cities with more limited analytical capacity, and UNDP may use the tool with city counterparts on green space, e-mobility and other urban initiatives.

Methodology

The project involves:

• Identifying, assessing and harmonizing relevant publicly available datasets.
• Evaluating data quality, spatial and temporal coverage, interoperability and suitability for integrated analysis, and identifying critical information gaps.
• Exploring how citizen-generated data could strengthen local evidence.
• Visualizing heat and air-pollution hotspots and examining the factors driving environmental risk and vulnerability.
• Developing a transparent, reproducible analytical framework and, as feasible, an algorithm that integrates multiple data sources to generate future risk scenarios and support investment prioritization.
• Depending on data suitability, exploring additional decision-support functions such as comparing alternative interventions for urban cooling and air quality.

Deliverables

• Decision-Support Tool: A proof-of-concept tool and methodology for identifying hotspots and prioritizing areas for action, adaptable to other urban contexts in Viet Nam.
• Analytical Framework: A transparent, reproducible framework integrating multiple data sources to generate future risk scenarios.
• Data Assessment: An evaluation of available datasets and the critical information gaps that affect decision-making.

Data Sources

Publicly available data, potentially including:

• Satellite-derived thermal and air-quality information
• Meteorological data
• Land-use and built-environment characteristics
• Population distribution data
• Other relevant urban indicators
• Citizen-generated data