The rapid growth of the city of Hanoi requires the development of new areas for sustainable and reasonable urban development. The Long Bien urban district located in north-east of Hanoi, comprises Gia Lam town, Duc Giang and Sai Dong, is restricted by Duong river, Hong river/Red river and the connection road between Thanh Tri bridge and Phu Dong bridge with area of 6,032 ha (inter dyke area: 2,250 ha, outer dyke area: 3,782 ha) and has current population of more than 200.000 inhabitants. Long Bien district will become one of the trade and service centre and transport head estate of road, railway and air way for connecting Hanoi with other provinces in the North of Vietnam.

Nowadays, the old urban areas and some new unprompted residential estates are not developed with a systematic drainage system therefore flooding occurs in some areas. Waste water of many residential estates, factories, manufactories, hospitals is not drained and treated decentralized by septic tanks or centralized in a treatment plant. Hence the pollution risk from waste water is high and affects the welfare of people.

The area of Long Bien is one of the areas of Hanoi, where a master plan for the further development exists. Within this project this existing master plan for the urban water management will be refined according to new sustainable approaches.