Hanoi, Vietnam
Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital and the key economic node of the country’s north, is a booming city of around 8 million people as of 2019. In the face of rapid urbanization, Vietnam needs to highlight a more comprehensive and inclusive approach to mobility. Hanoi is located in the low-lying areas of the Red River Delta and has faced natural disasters such as floods for a long time. The transport sector’s vulnerability to extreme weather patterns shocks necessitates natural disaster management and cost-effective resource allocation through operations and maintenance mechanisms for transportation assets.
Between April and October of 2020, the Japan-World Bank Program for Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Management in Developing Countries supported the deployment of experts from Tokyo Metro to share their experience and provide recommendations to the Hanoi Government on how to strengthen the reliability, resilience and sustainability of the metro network. This was done by two projects, i.e. i) defining opportunities to enhance disaster resilience in the development of a Network Operation Control Center (NOCC) and ii) through a comprehensive case study about rail transportation asset management at Tokyo Metro. Tokyo Metro, Japan’s largest metro service operator, has extensive experience in this field through the operation of its complex metro rail network.
As Hanoi embarks on the development of the metro rail network, the experience of Tokyo to improve the capacity of managing the network and in particular on disaster resilience aspects is highly of relevance and use if incorporated into the designs and plans that are being developed. Tokyo Metro, which currently operates nine metro lines with 195.1 kilometers of track and 179 stations, has an experience of combining line-based Operational Control Centers into an NOCC. It also has had several emergency events due to train accident and natural disaster. Tokyo Metro has extensive experience in planning and implementing resilience mechanisms into new metro system like Hanoi. Their experience was put together into a knowledge product to help improve the capacity the proposed NOCC of managing the network.
Meanwhile, Tokyo Metro supported the World Bank Vietnam team to review the regulatory frameworks, institutions and procedures, financial programming and technology application of Metro Rail Asset Management at Tokyo Metro. This helped to analyze how these factors contribute to financial and operational resilience and sustainability of the system and what lessons learnt can be shared with client countries. This analysis is contributing to a global report of good practices on transportation asset management and is being used to provide recommendations on how asset management practices, including enhancing the disaster risk management and prevention can inform investment decision in Vietnam.
These projects provided Hanoi Government the opportunity to consider strengthening DRM aspects through potential development of NOCC and transport investment relating to i) resilient asset management, ii) importance of steady periodic inspections, iii) leveraging new technology to conserve resources and solve challenges; and iv) proactively introducing accident and disaster countermeasures and promoting training on the assumption of emergency situations.
The World Bank is starting a follow up study with Hanoi Government to integrate DRM and sustainability into the ongoing metro development program including consideration of Hanoi’s NOCC and asset management systems, at the same time, to learn case studies relating to TAM.
