Assessing the Flood Impacts and the Cultural Properties Vulnerabilities in Ayutthaya, Thailand

Abstract

The Historic City of Ayutthaya, founded in ca.1350 as the second capital of the Kingdom of Siam after Sukhothai, is a World Heritage site locating on an island of the Chao Phraya, Lopburi and Pa Sak rivers. The severe flood in Thailand, lasted for three months, since October-December 2011 has inundated the World Heritage properties and historic monuments around the city of Ayutthaya. Because of the extreme height of the flood, the protective embankments could no longer withstand the 2011 flood as they did before. In fact Ayutthaya has long been flooded. In the past, the local people solved this problem by digging canals we still can find today many canals and water gates at most of the rivers around and inside the Ayutthaya Island. As current situations change, canal digging is no longer an appropriate way for the city flood protection. The previous flood has damaged the historic monuments in the historic city of Ayutthaya. To conserve those historic monuments, it is important to assess the damages in terms of environmental damage, external damage and internal damage. The levels of damage; high risk, medium risk and low risk respectively, are also assigned. Furthermore, the historic monument values are ranked as high, medium or low values. These two factors are employed as indicators for setting the priorities of historic monument site conservation. The research found out that highest risk damages for the historic monument sites were the level above the mean sea level and the distance from the rivers or canals. To protect those valuable historic monument sties in future, all stakeholders should be involved in the conservation plan.

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