KUALA LUMPUR: The government’s efforts to seek flood mitigation expertise from the Netherlands is the best move to reduce the billions of ringgit in costs spent annually to implement flood disaster management systems.
Director of the Department of Water and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Skudai, Johor, Associate Prof Dr Mohamad Hidayat Jamal fully supported the government’s commitment to do so, saying that it will reduce the losses suffered yearly by the people affected.
“The flood issue is a critical one, which needs an urgent solution. The Netherlands has vast experience in managing flood risks as more than 26 per cent of the country is below sea level, with an estimated 60 per cent of its land in high-risk areas.
“Average annual rainfall in the Netherlands is 800 millimetre (mm) compared with Malaysia which gets 3,000 mm a year. Our rainfall patterns and causes of floods may differ from other countries,” he told Bernama.
Mohamad Hidayat said due to the floods they faced, the Netherlands has been more creative in successfully implementing flood risk management methods and reducing costs.
He said that among the…
