Malaysia DRR Webinar: ‘Climate Adaptation: Towards a More Resilient Malaysia’
Date: 8th November 2021
Venue/Platform: ZOOM Online Meeting
Participants: Muhammad Firdaus Ammar Bin Abdullah, Prof. Joy Jacqueline Pereira, Rebecca Beckett, Sr. Dr. Noralfishah Sulaiman.
Description: This webinar showcases four climate adaptation-focused initiatives in Malaysia, which are UK-Malaysia collaborations under the Newton Fund and the Global Challenges Research Fund. The webinar is one of a series of public engagement activities under the Newton-Ungku Omar Fund to disseminate research outcomes and impact with government representatives, industry players, academia, and the general public. It is also part of the British High Commission’s campaign to highlight key UK-Malaysia science partnerships in support of COP26. The webinar is structured as a combination of project presentations, and a panel discussion to explore the value of international scientific collaboration in climate adaptation and resilience. The four projects are:
- The Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) is a collaborative initiative between the UK Met Office and global counterparts, including in NADMA, Met Malaysia, JPS, and NAHRIM in Malaysia. Launched in 2016, WCSSP aims to develop and improve global and regional forecasting systems and advance the understanding of high-impact weather such as heavy rainfall events and tropical cyclones in Southeast Asia.
- The Multi-Hazard Platform (MHP) was developed by the University of Cambridge and the Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention Research Institute (SEADPRI-UKM) to provide forecasting at the local level of climate extremes and physical hazards in Kuala Lumpur. The system provides hi-res 3-day forecasts for rainfall, temperature and air pollution and combines this data with information on areas susceptible to landslides, flash-floods and sinkholes to create a hazard map to inform emergency response.
- Led by the University of Salford in partnership with University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, MOBILISE is a collaborative multi-agency digital platform for building resilient communities in Sarawak, offering intelligence to a range of agencies to work together to reduce the impact of natural disasters. It helps agencies establish a common understanding of vulnerabilities, exploring “what-if” scenarios, the impact of various hazards on infrastructure, the community and the economy in different local contexts, and improving resilience capacities through various mitigation measures.
- Building on existing partnerships from the MOBILISE projects, TRANSCEND investigates processes, governance structures, policies and technology that can enable a transition towards a more risk-sensitive and transformative urban development approach. It uses a multi-stakeholder approach to analyse, forecast, visualize and debate disaster risk trade-offs and choose development plans that ensure sustainability and equitable resilience, giving consideration to climate change adaptation.