Abstract

The environmental sensitivity of coastal areas isattracting significant attention from researchers because it canpredict the consequences of water environmental incidents.Environmental sensitivity is usually estimated based on variouscriteria that are related to specific aspects of the physical orenvironmental conditions in an area combined with itssocioeconomic conditions. The main objective of this study wasto develop a suitable set of criteria that covers all three aspects,namely, physical, socioeconomic, and environmental conditions,to support sensitivity assessments and zoning in the southeastcoastal region of Vietnam, which is the most dynamicdeveloping coastal region in the country. In the study,multiple-criteria decision-making was used to develop thecoastal environmental sensitivity criteria and calculate thecriteria weights. Remote sensing was used for data collectionand geographical information system for the assessment andzoning of the study areas. A set of eight suitable criteria wereproposed: coastal type, coast slope, species, nature reserve,population density, vulnerable population, tourism, andaquaculture, with optimal weighting for each criterion wasproposed. A thorough site survey with data collection was thenconducted in 27 sub-regions of the study area. The proposedcriteria were applied to evaluate and zone the areas into foursensitivity levels: low, moderate, high, and extreme, whichaccounted for 7.41%, 29.63%, 37.04%, and 25.93% of the studyarea, respectively. Practical and effective solutions wereproposed for 17 sub-regions with high and extremeenvironmental sensitivity. The research results are expected toenhance knowledge of coastal environmental hazards andprovide a reference for sustainability decision-making andplanning.