doi: 10.3850/S1793924012100146

A Decision Support System to Deal with Contemporary Issues of Climate Change Induced Vulnerability and Human Security in Malaysia

Mohammad Imam Hasan Reza^1,a and Sharifah Munirah Alatas^{1,2 1}Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention Research Institute (SEADPRI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. ^arezamih@gmail.com ²Strategic Studies and International Relations Program, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

ABSTRACT

Environmental displacement has become a contemporary global concern due to the increasing intensity of climate change effects on peoples around the world. In recent times, this issue has become a socio-political problem due to the increasing rate of displacement within and outside of a country. Therefore, environmental security has emerged as a new concept and growing issue within the domain of human security. This development has become a political issue, due to socio-economic and cross border involvement as well as problems that have emerged within countries. Also, remarkably little attention has been given to analyze, monitor, evaluate and predict changes that are involved in the causes and consequences of climate change induced vulnerability and human security. Similarly, detailed studies on the causes due to such contemporary issues are lacking, globally. For this paper, it is intends to identify causes, consequences and projections of environmental degradation, and the vulnerability of human livelihood caused by climatic and hydro-meteorological disasters in Malaysia. Therefore, this paper discusses issues to do with flood-related vulnerability both in rural and urban areas, and its impact on human security in Malaysia. It also outlines the potential scientific tools that may be applied to predict, evaluate and plan to overcome the problem. The prime objective is to identify and to develop a new paradigm integrating tools of socio-economic, cultural and scientific aspects. It is assuming that, this effort would be able to put forward a theme to integrate scientists, social scientists and policy makers to work together to solve such issues.

Keywords: Decision Support System (DSS), Environmental displacement, Flood hazard, Flood governance, Geographical Information System (GIS), Human security, Vulnerability.

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