Dinh Huynh
Doctor of Philosophy candidate
Urban planning, Transdisciplinary Sustainability
Biography
Dinh has an Architect Degree in Urban & Regional Planning from University of Architecture Ho Chi Minh City and a Master of Science Degree from Politecnico di Milano. Prior to joining The University of Melbourne, he worked as a landscape architect in Vietnam and Italy, and tutored landscape architecture subjects at Politecnico di Milano. Dinh has been awarded scholarships for his Master and PhD studies from the Invest Your Talent in Italy Program and the Melbourne Research Scholarship, respectively.
Over a decade of studying and working in urban planning and landscape architecture has formed Dinh’s interest in the water dynamics in natural and built environments. In his PhD project, Dinh’s water focus is on flooding and dealing with flood in delta cities, through the lens of trans-disciplinary interactions between science, policy and practice in urban flood management. His broader interest is about bridging knowledge and actions for sustainability transformations in developing countries.
Thesis
Science-policy-practice interface: The case of urban flood management in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Coastal delta cities are facing simultaneous flood pressures due to the combination of coastal, deltaic and climate dynamics, which are being exacerbated by rapid urbanization and the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise. Sustainably managing those risks is an enormous challenge requiring partnerships between a wide range of the delta’s stakeholders and across multiple disciplines.
Correspondingly, there are repeated calls for stronger collaborations between science and the society to address many of the global environmental and social challenges. Underpinning many of the scholars' responses to such calls is an increased focus on the concept of science-policy-practice interface (SPPI), which emphasizes the multi-dimensional interactions between science, policy and practice to tackle sustainability challenges.
Yet due to the relatively small body of the existing literature, the SPPI concept requires further exploration and empirical evidence to strengthen understandings and applications of its theory. This research will contribute by applying this concept to examine the sustainability challenges related to flooding and flood management in the tropical-coastal-delta city of Ho Chi Minh (HCMC), Vietnam. The review of literature about the city’s flood management, through SPPI’s lens, reveals significant gaps with the dominance of one-way linear approach 'from science to policy to practice' in studies about these domains’ linkages.
To examine the multi-dimensional interactions of those domains, the SPPI conceptual framework guides insights into three flood management projects, through analyzing of project’s documents, interviewing involved actors and observing projects' operation. The main objectives are to understand: if SPPI exists in the city’s flood management processes, its nature, and how an effective SPPI can assist in more successful and timely flood management for the city’s context. These understandings are crucial for developing solutions to bridge the science-policy-practice gaps and facilitate the interface between scientific research, policy formulation and implementation, which is anticipated as way to manage the flood issues more sustainably in HCMC as well other delta cities.