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disaster. Such considerations, and the UNDDD, have helped

USM to refocus attention on land use and land degradation

under sustainable development. Malaysia and its universi-

ties are an active part of national efforts to manage land and

land resources sustainably.

The disaster risk management

for sustainable development (DRM-SD) model, developed

by USM and the Centre for Global Sustainability Studies

(CGSS), shows such an approach.

There follows a description of USM’s research efforts

towards risk-reduced land use by addressing potential

negatives and turning them into positives that promote

sustainability. In order to address land degradation and

risk management within the context of this article, we have

identified four specific areas: rainfall and land erosion; risk

assessment; slope monitoring; and slope stability software

where the authors (Fauziah Ahmad and Ahmad Shukri

Yahaya) have played lead roles. Although these projects

have focused on land management issues of Penang state in

Malaysia, the methodologies used and the results obtained

have much wider applications.

Rainfall erosivity — the ability of rainfall to cause erosion

due to its physical characteristic — is increasingly used for

soil erosion risk assessment for current and future, espe-

cially under a changing climate. Land management models

use rainfall amount and intensity as key factors.

The effect of rainfall erosivity in Penang was considered

for two stations, Air Itam and Simpang Ampat. Monthly as

well as annual rainfall data, obtained from the Department

of Drainage and Irrigation, Malaysia for 30 years (1983-

2012) was used to calculate the mean and standard

deviation per decade.

The coefficient of variation is less than 0.3 for all

stations, showing that the mean rainfall has very small

variability although the regression line shows a slightly

moderate positive trend. Mann-Kendall trend analysis and

Sen’s slope tests were carried out to establish the decadal

mean monthly rainfall variability. The Fournier indexes

were used to determine the effect of extreme rainfall events

towards soil erosivity. Air Itam recorded 10 per cent cases

of very severe impact using the Fournier index and 3.33 per

cent cases of very high impact using the modified Fournier

index. This shows that while Air Itam is susceptible to soil

erosion due to rainfall events, Simpang Ampat is more

prone to landslide.

Penang has a corrugated and hilly topography.

Construction activities in these areas are increasing primar-

ily for residential and commercial purposes. Assessing the

extent of the corresponding development risk is critical to

the life and property of local inhabitants. Using 13 variables

such as slope gradient, soil profile, rock quality designation,

plastic index, shear strength of coarse and fine grained soil,

groundwater monitoring, land-use suitability, slope stabili-

zation measures, slope stability analysis, rock fall analysis,

retaining and foundation system, soil erosion and sedimenta-

tion control and maintenance monitoring, the authors have

modified existing rating systems to arrive at a methodology

to assess the overall risk thresholds for landslides.

USM’s main campus in Penang has an aesthetically beau-

tiful and hilly terrain. As part of its commitment to be a

sustainability-led university, a pilot slope-monitoring study

was conducted by a group led by the authors to monitor

and mitigate USM’s hillside hostels. The Well-Inform

Landslides Monitoring System (WILMS), a real-time web

monitoring system, was developed which integrates the

use of Short Messaging Services and Multimedia Messaging

Services technology to disseminate results.

Based on the on-site data collected without needing

constant manual intervention, WILMS forecasts when land

instability is more likely to occur. Such data eventually

form the basis on which WILMS outputs are computed.

WILMS’ capacity to establish secure communication with

users while preserving proper data transfer between data

Environmental risk by project

The graph shows the results applying the authors’ methodology

to 16 selected project sites, P1-P16, which are also landslide-

prone hillside development sites in Penang. The results show that

12 per cent of project sites were at high environmental risk, 44

per cent at medium risk and others at low risk.

The results are

used to develop the guidelines for slope land use and sustainable

management by the Penang State Government.

Source: USM

4.00

3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00

0.50

0.00

Project ID

Environmental risk (rating)

P10

P11

P12

P13

P14

P15

P16

Typical output of Safety Map Analysis using USlopeM

software

Source: USM

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