Mekong Delta villagers in flood plain regions have been trained to pre-empt flooding by recording water levels in remote areas and reporting the figures to local weather agencies.

The residents then report the figures to the Southern Region Hydro-Meteorological Center in Ho Chi Minh City, which forecasts floods in the delta region.

The project is part of a regional program to increase the level of involvement in the flood forecasting process for communities living on vulnerable flood plains and to boost the capacity of national flood forecasting agencies, according to the Mekong River Commission (MRC), of which Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are members.

Villagers will take measurements twice a day, from newly established flood markers in the flood plains and then report these figures via text message.

The commission said the information is then entered into a computer and a flood forecast is fed back to villagers by their respective national flood forecasting agencies.

The villagers have been given mobile phones, boats, bikes, gasoline for motorcycles, measuring equipment, flood markers and notice boards for the project.

The information gathered by village observers can also be used by the center to develop maps and other computer simulation models for predicting when flash floods will be most likely to occur in remote areas, how people can adapt to these floods and how they can better plan land-use, according to the commission.

“Until now, receiving information for flood monitoring from remote flood plains has been difficult, as establishing lines of communication and a formal government structure has sometimes proven to be expensive,” said Jeremy Bird, CEO of the MRC Secretariat.

“However, the expanding cell phone network and decreased price of communications technology in recent years has made the approach of involving villagers to monitor and measure water levels more feasible and provides a cost effective solution.”

The 2008 flood season in the Lower Mekong Basin saw rivers reach their highest levels since 1966 and more than US$135 million worth of damage was caused, with Thailand and Laos bearing brunt of this loss, according to the MRC.

Reported by Minh Quang