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1 Introduction

Almost every end of the year during the northeast monsoon, the east states of Peninsular Malaysia will be inundated by flood water. Flooding is the most significant natural hazard in Malaysia, as evidenced by the history recorded since 1920, in which the country had experienced major floods in 1926, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1979, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2005, and most recently was in December 2014. The main causes of flood occurrence in Malaysia are the abundant amount of rainfall, in addition to other factors such as deforestation, tidal effect, lack of maintenance to the river system, and increased number of urbanized areas with inadequate drainage that cannot support the amount of flow during the heavy rainfall. The combination of natural and human factors has produced different types of floods such as monsoon, flash, and tidal flood. Flood had caused extensive damages to property, road and railways system, agricultural land, crops, and loss of life. Following the disastrous 1971 flood, the government had established the Disaster Management and Relief committee (NDMRC) in 1972 for coordinating the flood relief operations at national, state, and district levels.

The main purpose of the study is to produce a holistic flood risk management system (HFRM) for flood disaster in Malaysia. The HFRM system can become a very useful tool for the public, private, and other related agencies to assess the risk before, during, and after the flood disaster. In Malaysia, National Security Council (NSC) together with other agencies such as Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) are the responsible parties for coordinating all relief operation before, during, and after flood events. To achieve this aim, the study will examine the current SOPs related to flood disaster. The focus of this paper was to review the current SOPs implemented by the country and assess the need of HFRM system to improve the flood management in the country.

2 Flood Disaster Management in Malaysia

Disaster had and will always be a part of life so long as hazards and risks exist. Many developed countries nowadays are still challenged with problems when faced with the flood disaster although they are well-equipped with sophisticated structural and non-structural measures and defense systems. The flood hazards are almost certain; what we can do is to minimize the impact of disaster in order to save people and properties. Risk assessment and validation of flood disasters are a worldwide problem in the field of natural science and technology.

In Malaysia, floods occur frequently in urban or rural areas and cause the greatest damages among all natural disasters. The damages caused by floods estimated annually were MYR 1 billion that affect 21 % of Malaysia’s population [1]. Floods occurred at varying severities in East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia especially in Kelantan. There are three types of flood in Malaysia: the monsoonal flood, flash, and tidal flood [2]. Monsoonal flood is due to heavy rainfall usually occurs in a longer period from one week to a month. In urban areas, flash floods normally occur during a short period within two or three hours due to highly intense rainfall.

Floods are not new to the country, but what have been done to mitigate and manage this disaster. There is a need to understand the concept of disaster and what it entails, as well as the country’s flood risk management system which covers the activities before, during, and after a flood disaster tragedy.

In Malaysia, the Natural Management and Relief Committee (NDMRC) coordinates flood relief operations at every level: national, state, and district levels [3]. The flood disaster management is based on National Security Council (NSC) Directive No 20 and Fixed Operating Regulations (PTO). It describes the responsibilities of various agencies and the cooperation of these agencies in managing disaster. The National Flood Disaster Relief Machinery (NFDRM) is the committee that reacts to major floods based on reactive system [3]. This committee is responsible for operations at national, state, district, mukim, and village levels [2]. The relief machinery and emergency flood management covers the flood forecasting and warning system (pre-disaster), flood relief machinery (during disaster), flood management emergency (during disaster), and funding and aid delivery system (post disaster).

3 Malaysian Flood Disaster Management Model

For pre-disaster flood management, flood forecasting systems have been developed and used by the Department of Irrigation and Drainage such as linear transfer function model and tank model to forecast for future flood in the flood prone areas. Information from the model was used for flood preparation to the potential area to be hit. Dissemination systems such as SMS, telephone, warning sirens, fax, and Web site were also used as flood warning system. Although there is a system for pre-disaster flood management, the data used as input for flood forecasting models are only based on river level and rain gauge data. The total number of telemetric stations for rainfall and river flow seems large enough at populated area, and telemetric rain gauge stations should also be installed at sparsely populated areas such as highland watershed areas [2].

Integrated flood forecasting and river monitoring (IFFRM) is a project that integrates flood forecasting model and monitoring the water resource-related issues such as water quality, drought, and debris flow. Through this project, a total of 88 hydrological stations have been set up across Klang River Basin to record and monitor rainfall, water level, soil moisture, water quality, water flow, and weather (using met stations). These data will be used as input for flood forecasting model to give efficient and accurate flood forecasting and warning to relevant agencies related to water, namely DID Kuala Lumpur, DID Selangor, Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), Local authority, dam operators, and media. With this information, the agencies can make decision and make preparation for incoming flood to reduce the impact of flood in the affected area.

Flood mitigation policy in Malaysia has progressively improved. Since the first Malaysia Plan (1971–1975), the country’s expenditure on flood mitigation has increased substantially. Many structural and non-structural measures have been implemented for flood control and relief. However, there are many areas that need to be improved. The government has introduced a flood management program using holistic approach with respect to five strategies, namely prevention, protection, preparedness, emergency, and recovery [2]. These strategies involve the collaboration among government, private sector, non-governmental organization (NGO), and community. However, the success of this flood disaster management depends on its implementation on the affected areas.

The current flood disaster management is focusing on the strategies to manage the flood disaster during the flooding. The implementation normally is focusing on the rescue shelter, food, and medical supplies for the victims during the flood events. There is no risk management system in place to evaluate the disaster before, during, and after the flood disaster. Current flood management model also lacks multidisciplinary approach, in which there is no balanced mixture between structural and non-structural measures. In addition, there is lack of integration among various agencies that are responsible for flood management.

4 Disaster Management Mechanism

In general, any disaster management mechanism should involve four stages. First, preparation before disaster includes flood event forecasting, early flood warning, and decision making by experts to prevent further problem [4]; secondly, preparation for the arrival of the disaster; thirdly, the disaster emergency response; and fourthly, the disaster recovery response [5].

In Malaysia, the National Security Council (NSC) is the coordinating body in disaster management and also the lead policy maker. All activities involved in the disaster prevention, preparedness, response operation, and recovery are coordinated by the NSC [6]. The National Security Council had established the Directive No. 20 to integrate and coordinate the management of disasters on land in an organized and systematic way. The directives provide comprehensive set of guidelines during disasters in Malaysia based on Hyogo Framework for Action as Malaysia is a member to the World Conference [7]. The guidelines become the main instrument in activating flood management with the support of various other legislations though it is not specifically enacted for flood management [8]. Other related acts such as Land Conservation Act 1960, Town and Country Planning Act 1976, Environment Quality Act 1974, Local Government Act 1976, Irrigation Areas Act 1953, Drainage Works Act 1954, National Forestry Act 1984, and Uniform Building By-Laws 1984 are important in the flood disaster management [8].

The disaster management in the country is dependent on the assessment of the current situation. The assessment shall be based on the complexity and magnitude of the disaster, destruction, and damage caused by the ability of financial resources, manpower and equipment, expertise, assistance, and the time frame for response (Directive 20, MKN). The Directive 20 advocates an integrated management of responsibilities and functions of various agencies involved. Three levels of management are established to manage the disasters based on the severity level of the disaster itself. The directive is also supported by other Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) stipulated by various agencies which outline the mechanism of disaster management as well as their duty and responsibility [6]. The three levels of management and their scope are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Disaster management committee level
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The action procedure and the relief operation by the government authority level for each stage in overcoming the disaster are shown in Table 2. As with the case in Kelantan on December 2014, the disaster management had gone up to Level III, the Central Level headed by a minister appointed by the Prime Minister. The operation had been implemented satisfactorily though there are many unexpected problems due to the unprecedented scale of the event such as insufficient shelter, food, and rescue transport. The action procedures and relief operation had also been implemented to its optimum capability and capacity regardless of the different party that rule the state.

Table 2 Action procedures and relief operation at each level of Disaster Management Committee
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5 Roles and Duties of Agencies

Various agencies need to work together to ensure flood victims safety and relief during a flood event. Ref. [7] has the opinion that the government officials involved during flood event are purely exercising their standard official responsibility as members of the civil service, army, or police. Table 3 lists the responsibilities of various agencies during a disaster.

Table 3 Various agencies and the related roles and responsibilities
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Table 4 shows the SOPs from different agency involved in disaster management referring from document PTO (Peraturan Tetap Operasi) Flood Disaster Response (Tindakbalas Menghadapi Bencana Banjir). As shown in Tables 3 and 4, the roles and responsibilities of the agencies are well established and it is only a matter of good coordination during a disaster that will ensure these operating procedures are effectively executed.

Table 4 SOPs of various agencies
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6 Flood Risk Management

The process to manage flood risk situation involves activities that are intended to improve the capability in coping with the flood event [8]. In flood risk management, recovery process after a disaster is equally important as the process to reconstruct and rehabilitate after the flood [7]. The objective of having a holistic flood risk management is to control any flood event, in terms of flood preparedness to reduce the flood impact [8]. This includes the process of risk analysis, which offers the basis for elongated term management decisions for the present flood protection system.

Figure 1 shows The Critical Water level at Flood Warning Station. The water levels are divided into several stages which are the normal level, the caution level, the warning level, and the danger level. Based on these levels, the specific appropriate acts can be identified. This kind of information is critical in providing early warning of flood risks for improved flood preparedness. Besides that, different organizations are responsible for warning and evacuation orders for different disaster as shown in Table 5.

Fig. 1
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The critical water level at flood warning station. Source Kesiapsiagaan Bencana Semasa Monsun Timur Laut, MKN

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Table 5 Organizations responsible for warning and evacuation orders
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Effective disaster risk management contributes to sustainable development. To achieve sustainable development, resilience and disaster risk reduction must be part of urban design and this requires strong unions and broad participation [9]. Resilience can be defined as the capability of a system, community or society to struggle, absorb, accommodate to, and recover from the impact of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, (UNISDR 2009).

7 Conclusion

The paper presents a comprehensive information and review on the flood disaster management in Malaysia. The roles and responsibilities of the leading and supporting agencies involved in the flood rescue and relief operation are described. The current SOPs are also listed for each agency involved. In general, the flood disaster management in Malaysia is well defined and established, comprising district, state, and central levels and the supporting agencies with their comprehensive SOPs. However, the records show that the flood disaster management in the country is still having problem. There is a need to identify the best coordination system between all the agencies including non-government organizations (NGOs). The currently executed SOPs had not shown good coordination among the NGOs. Based on the previous experience especially during December 2014 flood, the involvement of NGOs is huge and significant. Future work is going to be executed in defining and establishing holistic risk management system in Malaysia. Hopefully with this kind of system, the coordination in managing flood disaster in Malaysia will be enhanced.