Free Flow

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nternational

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ater

ciences

and

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biological sciences, humanities and engineering schools, particu-

larly REDAC and CGSS, have been working on:

• flood forecasting, digital mapping, risk studies and

flood mitigations

• simulation of tsunami currents, for example Merbok Estuary

in Kedah

• assisting government agencies like the Department of

Drainage Malaysia on water issues such as preparing the

new version of MSMA, the Urban Storm Water Management

Manual for Malaysia

• rehabilitation of degraded and polluted rivers

• sustainable urban drainage systems

• community-based vulnerability and adaptation to flood

and food security (Kuala Nerang, Kedah).

An integrated and sustainable urban drainage system, known as

Bio-Ecological Drainage Systems (BIOECODS), was designed

by REDAC and subsequently constructed in 2002 at the USM

Engineering Campus in Penang to help address the issues of flash

floods, river pollution and water scarcity.

Another important area of research concerns community-based

adaptation and disaster risk management (DRM) in response to

climate change-induced floods and food security issues. DRM

must be defined inclusively to cover both ‘rapid-onset, high-

impact’ events such as floods and ‘slow-onset, high-impact’

disasters such as climate change and poverty. Recognizing that

most present-day sustainable development (SD) challenges

belong to the latter category, CGSS conducted a community-

based climate adaptation and food security project in Kuala

Nerang, Kedah, in Northern Peninsular Malaysia. This project

involved stakeholder consultation and capacity-building; assess-

ment of community vulnerability to flood-related food insecurity

and prospects for adaptation to climate change; and community

empowerment through physical and process-based adaptation

implementation assistance. For the long term, a new pathway

that connects DRM to SD (Neo DRM-SD) could be found that

addresses poverty, debilitating disasters and diseases, rapid loss

of biodiversity, and depleting capital within an integrated and

cooperative regime.

Stormwater management

The volume of stormwater, the timing of surges within the system

and the contaminants that stormwater may contain present the most

severe challenges to urban water management. Other environmental

issues caused by stormwater include increased turbidity from erosion,

habitat destruction and heightened seasonal variation in water levels.

USM scientists have developed the BIOECODS integrated solution for

sustainable urban drainage systems to address these multiple challenges.

The application of several best management practice options including

swales, wet ponds, detention ponds and wetlands, allows BIOECODS

to remove stormwater pollutants effectively. Bioecological swales target

urban rooftops and car parks, while underground bioecological deten-

tion storages and bioecological dry ponds help restore water quality.

Computer modelling

USM has been working closely with Malaysian water authorities and

stakeholder groups to provide them with water scenarios for the

future. We are using a variety of computer modelling approaches to

study issues relating to scour, sediment transport, land use changes,

flood levels and tsunamis. The 2011

REDAC Profile

includes examples such as scour modelling, integrated

river basin management, flood plain modelling and

tsunami modelling.

Scour modelling

–using soft computing techniques such

as artificial neural networks, ANFIS and Gene expression

programming, researchers have modelled scour problems

and conducted training based on their findings.

Integrated river basin management

– geographic

information system-assisted models have been used

for water quantity (flood) and sediment yield from

the catchment area of the Bukit Merah dam using

HEC-HMS and SWAT methodologies. The results show

that land-use projections through 2015 are suitable for

flow but not for sediment yield. This has implications

for the management of the catchment, dam operations

and land management.

Flood plain modelling

– USM researchers often use

computational and numerical models to predict water

flow and quality, sediment transport and toxic contami-

nant concentration in river and estuarine basins and

catchment areas. For example, using modelling results

for flood levels along Sungai Selangor (~106 km long)

and its flood plains between cross-section km 53 to

km 67, shows that the areas flooded are 736 and 889

hectares for 50-year and 100-year floods respectively.

Such river flood risk maps are useful for development

planning in the river basin.

Tsunami modelling

– USM researchers have modelled

the role of mangrove trees on the hydrodynamic

processes of tsunami waves and studied the potential

effects of tsunami waves from the South China Sea on

the east coast of Malaysia.

Field research on water quality

Image: REDAC USM