INGENIEUR
INGENIEUR
40 % and 48 % of their respective populations living in urban areas. All regions are expected to urbanize further over the coming decades( United Nations, 2014). Africa and Asia are urbanizing faster and anticipated to reach 56 % and 64 % of urban population respectively by 2050.
Owing to rapid urbanization, many cities around the world are exposed to flooding and extreme weather especially those located in low-lying coastal zones. Slum settlements are often built on the most vulnerable land, prone to landslides, or abutting waterways in flood zones. Most of the natural disasters thought to be increasing in terms of frequency of occurrence and severity are due to climate change. Between 1994 and 2013, 6,873 natural disasters occurred worldwide that cost the lives of 1.35 million people, with an accumulated average of 68,000 lives each year( CREOD, 2015). Flooding caused the majority of disasters between 1994 and 2013, forming 43 % of all recorded events that affected nearly 2.5 billion people worldwide. Figure 2 shows the interrelationship between climate-related disasters with the economic damages in the United States between 1950-2012( Leaning and Guha-Sapir, 2013). There were three times as many natural disasters in the 2000s than there were in the 1980s. On average, 218 million people per year were affected by natural disasters between 1994 and 2013. While the exact costs incurred are difficult to predict for the future, an average
Numbers of people affected by climate-related natural disasters
Annual average, 1998-2007 243 million Forecast, 2015
375 million % change Increase by 54 %
Figure 3: People Affected by Climate Disasters Worldwide( Source: Ganeshan, 2009) of 375 million people per year are expected to be affected by climate-related disasters in 2015, which is approximately 50 % more than those affected during the last decade.
NATURAL DISASTERS IN MALAYSIA
The geographical location of Malaysia is seemingly safe and less vulnerable to natural disasters. Lately however, exposure to a range of catastrophes from natural disasters has increased significantly due to climate change. The disaster and risk profile of Malaysia shows that our country is exposed to several types of natural disasters which include flood, landslide, earthquake, wildfire and storm. A statistic on the frequency of natural disasters in the country between 1990 and 2014 recorded flood as the event with the highest probability of occurrence at 62.5 %, followed by storm and landslide at 12.5 % and 8.3 % respectively as shown in Figure 4. Nevertheless, floods and landslides recorded lower percentages of mortality compared with storm, which produced almost 40 % of the total number of deaths caused by natural disasters in Malaysia between 1990 and 2014. Figure 4 also identifies mortality statistics caused by different types of natural disasters commonly occurring in the country between those years.
The major floods that took place in a few states in Peninsular Malaysia, particularly along the east coast, in late 2014 were one of the worst calamities that ever occurred in this country’ s recorded history. Several areas, which had never experienced such an event before, were inundated because of unprecedented elevation of water levels. Overall, 21 people were killed and eight others are still missing after the worst flooding in decades. Kelantan was the worst hit area with more than 150,000 people left homeless with a death toll of 14. Four people died in Terengganu and three in Pahang state. The number of people forced from their homes in the other affected states, namely Pahang, Perak, Terengganu and Johor was estimated to be around 83,570 people( The Straits Times, 2014). Figures 5 and 6 show the actual condition of a few locations in Kelantan during the major flash flood in December 2014.
As a result of these unexpected major flash
10 VOL 69 JANUARY-MARCH 2017