Our MCIAT. Gihan Badi is doing her PhD research at Leeds Beckett University on the resilience of build environment through the stakeholders participation and professionals in Malaysia.
Gihan on her first week in the city of Kuala Lumpur met Prof. Mazlin Bin Mokhtar, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Innovation, the National University of Malaysia, and she had a great discussion about flooding and disaster management in Malaysia.
In addition, Gihan conducted four interviews with professionals in the Civil Defence Department and Mercy Malaysia in the city of Kuala Lumpur to understand more about Malaysia’s Flood management system and how locals are involved to build resilient communities and disaster risk reduction.
The interviews conducted with the Director and assistant Director from the Policy Planning and Coordination Division at the Malaysia Civil Defence Department. Also the Head of Programme Development & Operations and Head of Project Communities Program Development Operations at Mercy Malaysia organisation.
Gihan gathered valuable information about the Total Disaster Risk Management TDRM approach in line with the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), which was adopted by 168 countries at the 2005 UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan. TDRM applies disaster risk management to all the phases of the disaster management cycle – emergency response, recovery, prevention / mitigation and preparedness/readiness.
Through the field study, Gihan is trying to determine the impact of community participation to create an effective flood resilience and resistance developments, and how local knowledge within communities have the ability to mitigate and rebound quickly after natural disasters. Moreover, to what extent the community involvement in rule and decision-making processes could be promoted.
More meetings and interviews will be conducted in the next two weeks.
