Abdullah Hisam Omar

Determination of Tidal Datum for Delineation of Littoral Zone for Marine Cadastre in Malaysia

The rapid development of coastal areas in Malaysia for economic generation activities and public interests has triggered the need for a new system of marine administration. Marine cadastre is the key in managing a complex marine administration that covers horizontal and vertical components. A tidal datum is a standard elevation defined by a certain phase of the tide. Tidal datum is also the basis for establishing privately owned land, state owned land, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and high seas boundaries. This chapter reviews some concepts and issues pertaining to the delineation of the tidal line for marine cadastre in Malaysia. This study analyzed the use of Lowest Astronomical Tide (LAT) as reference datum in marine cadastre. Localized hydrodynamic approach was used for generating the tidal model due to suitability and availability of global tidal model. Tide datasets acquired from Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (DSMM) has been processed using tidal analysis software for computing the LAT as the reference datum for marine cadastre. Output from the tidal data observed are tidal analysis can be made on sea levels, chart datum, types of tide and tidal constituents. This chapter aims to produce the tidal lines and littoral zone for use in marine cadastre procedures and practices. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the LAT is consistent and can potentially be used for marine cadastre reference level in order to improve the effectiveness of implementing the marine cadastre.

Extending the concept of institutional analysis to the marine spatial planning practice

Policy formation for the marine environment seems to be a central issue for the maritime nations in order to propose a strategic plan for marine spatial governance. The idea of forming a policy is about understanding the action principle among the institutions involved that guides towards an effective decision making process. The analysis that suits into the reformation of policies is the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD) that was proposed by Elinor Ostrom, the American political scientist focusing into the institutional behaviours. This paper strives to raise awareness of integrating the concept of Institutional Analysis and Development Framework into the effective practice of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) in Malaysia. The integration of social science knowledge into the Ecosystem Based Management (EBM) cycles seems to show a growing number in the past decade and the results obtained are reviewed to ensure the suitability of integrating the idea of Institutional Analysis & Development (IAD) into the Malaysian MSP practice to predict institutional behaviour and relationship for the outcomes.

Marine cadastre legal framework for Malaysia

The coastal Malays in particular regarded the seas as natural appurtenances to the land they occupy. Sovereign nations exercised absolute sovereignty and jurisdiction in seas covering the whole of sovereignty area of Malaysia. The seas surrounding the land played a significant role in the defence, economic, and political matters of the nation concerned. The sovereignty of nation depend on concept of unity between land and water expressed by the Malay word ‘tanahair’ which literally means land and water is depict to the meaning of native land. Such was already the significance and appreciation of the seas in this region. As early as 1276, during the reign of Sultan Muhammed Shah the first sovereign of the Malacca Sultanate, it was found that the Malays had already designed a set of laws of the sea applicable in sea areas within the jurisdiction of the Malacca Sultanate. These laws were referred to as the Malaca Code. Furthermore, introduction of marine cadastre is a new kind of sea uses, spatial extension of ongoing sea uses and the need to better protect and better arrangement of marine parcel for various users, as well as between the users and the environment. Marine cadastre legal framework is the process to define the marine alienation and marine spatial planning to allocate space for specific uses which can help to avoid user conflicts, to improve the management of marine spatial claim and sustain an ecosystem-based management of ocean.

Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Satellite Altimetry-Derived Wet Delay in Peninsular Malaysia

Water vapor is known as a gas state of water. The nature of the water vapor is invisible, which means it cannot be seen but can be sensed by the humidity in the air. As the climate is warming due to the increase of carbon dioxide and other anthropogenic greenhouse gases, water vapor is expected to increase rapidly as models broadly conserve relative humidity. Water vapor consists of two components, namely, dry and wet delay. Only wet delay will be highlighted in this study due to which the dry delay can be modeled easily. The wet delay in the atmosphere needs to be monitored as to detect and predict changes in earth’s climate particularly for weather forecasting. There are many methods that can be used to measure the wet delay such radiosonde and Global Positioning System (GPS). But both of them had their limitations; for example, they were point-based solutions means that the wet delay can be derived at a certain area. Radiosonde method needs to be launched twice daily, and for a single launch, cost a lot. This study presents an effort to extract the wet delay measurement from radiometer system using satellite altimeter. The advantage of using satellite altimeter is that the wet delay parameter can be retrieved on land and marine areas. Thus, it can improve the spatial resolution for wet delay retrieval. This study employs the altimetry-derived wet delay trend based on multi-mission satellite altimeter in the Peninsular Malaysia for 1-year data, in 2014. Two altimeter missions were used, namely, Jason-2 and Saral. Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS) was used to extract the water vapor data. Altimetry-derived water vapor was verified with GPS-derived Zenith Wet Delay (ZWD) at six GPS Continuously Operating Reference System (CORS) stations. The verification results showed that the RMSE between the altimetry-derived wet delay and GPS-derived wet delay was about 3–12 cm. Furthermore, the data from the satellite altimeter is in a good shape with the seasonal variation of precipitation according to the climatic classification of the region. Besides that, the observed data also give reasonable values when considered for the wet and dry seasons because the value from the CORS and satellite altimeter only had a slight difference. In conclusion, altimetry-derived wet delay is promising to be used in climate and weather research in the future.

Sea Level Impact Due to El Nino and La Nina Phenomena from Multi-mission Satellite Altimetry Data over Malaysian Seas

The El Nino and La Nina phenomena indirectly provide dramatic changes to the sea level that can be caused by floods and drought, and affect various marine activities. For the past centuries, the main approach to measure sea level changes is by using coastal tide gauges. However, there is inconsistency in observing sea level variations using tide gauge data for the Malaysian country. The inconsistency is due to irregular geographical distributions of tide gauge stations established at coastal areas and there are no long-term tide records for the deep sea. An alternative method in order to solve this issue is by measuring the absolute sea level from space, i.e., satellite altimeter technique. Satellite altimeter implements excellent potential as an integral mechanism to the conventional coastal tide gauge instruments for monitoring sea level variation of Malaysian seas, especially for the deep sea. The aim of this research is to study the sea level pattern due to the effects of El Nino and La Nina phenomena using a combination of multi-mission satellite altimeters in the Malaysian seas. Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS) is used for retrieval and reduction of sea level data from satellite altimeter. Then, sea level data from tide gauge was used to verify satellite altimeter derive the sea level data. The result of this research shows that satellite altimetry is reliable in other to monitor changes in sea level. It also shows that El Nino and La Nina phenomena can also contribute as one of the factors to sea level changes around Malaysian seas. Hence, this research will specifically help in the determination of sea level in Malaysia and to the professionals who have authority in governmental, environmental planning, agriculture, marine engineering, and economics.

Real-Time Precise Point Positioning (RT-PPP) for Positioning and Mapping

Real-Time Precise Point Positioning (RT-PPP) has started to develop among Global Positioning System (GPS) community due to some reasons, such as reference stations are required, very economical and easy to operate from everywhere. By using a dual-frequency receiver with the support from GPS precise products, RT-PPP has proven to give centimetre to decimeter positioning accuracy. Recently, the position can be obtained in real time using the real-time GPS precise products provided by many national geodetic agencies. Current real-time GPS positioning systems also allow accurate positioning by carrier phase-based double differencing approach. However, the limitation of using the differential approach is the process needs simultaneous data collection from common satellites at the reference station and the rover. Directly, the data acquisition process will become more difficult and this will decrease the suitability of this technique in other potential applications. The aim of this research is to analyse the current performance of RT-PPP technique using Hemisphere Atlas for positioning and mapping. This research also assessed the positioning accuracy between RT-PPP and static GPS techniques. Then, the reliability of RT-PPP for cadastral purposes is also evaluated. Methodologically, RT-PPP used Hemisphere Atlas, which is a dual-frequency receiver for position determination by processing raw pseudorange and carrier phase observations with the support from precise GPS orbit and clock information. The results of this research show that the coordinate for both positioning and mapping purposes using Hemisphere Atlas are within centimetre-level accuracy, i.e. below 10 cm for positioning and below 30 cm for cadastral purposes. Therefore, this study anticipates that RT-PPP has the potential to offer better operational flexibility that will guide for the full implementation of this technology particularly in surveying and mapping in the future.

The Development of Computational Routine for Deformation Modelling and Analysis: A Case for Two-Dimensional Geodetic Technique

Nowadays, deformation monitoring survey includes numerous tasks, for example monitoring of engineering structures such as dam and bridges, land subsidence, earthquakes and other related applications. As a result, many professional groups such as surveyors and structural engineers, besides geophysics and geologists study the deformation analysis as a rigorous subject. Deformation measurements and analysis using geodetic method is one of the complicated and challenging works that need to be undertaken by land surveyors. The result of deformation analysis is to be used by other professions such as engineers, geodesists and geophysics as well. However, they are not really interested in the geometrical analysis (i.e. coordinate difference). Actually, they required the result of deformation modelling which is the deformation parameter that related to their field of study. Here shows the importance of information on deformation modelling instead of geometrical analysis and when its need to be performed. This study focused on the development of deformation modelling computational routine and subsequently been incorporated into an existing deformation analysis package. Deformation modelling is the stage to produce the right mathematical model from the result of deformation analysis (trend analysis) with relevant deformation parameter. The computational routine developed to analyse survey data obtained by the conventional geodetic technique in 2 dimension. In order to do deformation analysis, MATLAB program has been used to solve all the computation process. As a result, the ‘best’ model has been selected among the five models tested. The best model showed what type of deformation occurs on the body of the simulation network. The outcomes of the research have also improved from previous software and the results obtained were good and practicable to this study.

Spatiotemporal Variations of Earth Tidal Displacement over Peninsular Malaysia Based on GPS Observations

Malaysia, which geographically located in the Sunda Plate, is exposed to various types of natural hazards such as land subsidence, landslides, and natural deformation phenomena. This study is conducted to investigate both the spatial and temporal variations of Earth tidal displacement over Peninsular Malaysia using a Kinematic Precise Point Positioning (KPPP) GPS analysis. The continuous GPS observation over a 1-year period has been utilized to observe the diurnal, semi-diurnal, and long-term periods. The KPPP GPS solutions correlate well with prediction from the theoretical Earth tidal model that consists of both ocean tide loading and solid Earth body tide model with average positive correlation 0.9810 and average mean biased −1.2997 cm. Results have widened the understanding of Earth tidal variations in equatorial regions, thus beneficial for Earth tidal modeling and improving quality of space geodetic measurements.

The Impact of Different International Terrestrial Reference Frames (ITRFs) on Positioning and Mapping in Malaysia

In Malaysia, Geocentric Datum of Malaysia 2000 (GDM2000) is connected to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame 2000 (ITRF2000). In comparison with the previous models, ITRF2014 represents a significant improvement in datum definition and realization. Nevertheless, the improvement causes a frame difference between ITRF2000, ITRF2008 and ITRF2014. Due to earthquakes that hit Sumatra region of Indonesia in the years 2004, 2005 and 2007 followed by post-seismic and co-seismic activities, Malaysia no longer lies on a stable continent. The movement on tectonic plate caused a shifting in geodetic datum of Malaysia to become non-geocentric. Thus, this factor gives impacts on positioning and mapping in Malaysia particularly in the realm of cadastral. Therefore, to measure the effect, the coordinates for positioning and mapping based on different International Terrestrial Reference Frames were analysed. To achieve the aim, this study is categorized into three phases. In the first phase, Global Positioning System (GPS) data was processed with respect to different reference frames (ITRF2000, ITRF2008 and ITRF2014) by Precise Point Positioning (PPP) Waypoint software. The result derived from the first phase was then be used in the next phase, where the coordinate was analysed based on different reference frames. In the third phase, the reliability of coordinate with different ITRFs was assessed specifically for cadastral purposes. In order to analyse the coordinates, a point at helipad of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) was observed by using GPS static technique, and the data was processed differently according to the frames by PPP. The coordinates processed were used as a base station for fast static GPS observation. To process the data, Trimble Total Control (TTC) software was used resulting in three different coordinates of each point observed. The coordinates were assessed with respect to the existing Cassini-Soldner geocentric coordinates and coordinates derived from network-based Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) observation. The results show that ITRF2014 has small value of standard deviations with the mean of 0.0010, 0.0003 and 0.0020 m for latitude, longitude and height for point positioning. Whereas for mapping, the differences between coordinates from PA 40225—ITRF2000, PA 40225—ITRF2008 and PA 40225—ITRF2014 in general range from −0.277 to −0.209 m for northing and from 0.424 to 0.515 m for easting. In conclusion, GDM2000 has to be revised frequently with respect to the latest version of ITRF in order to give a better positional accuracy, and a fix geocentric mapping datum needs to be opted for cadastral integrated purposes in Malaysia.

Monitoring the King Tide Phenomenon Over Malacca Straits and South China Sea from Space Geodetic Missions

At the end of year 2016, the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia has been hit by the flood. The low-lying area along the coastline was flooded with seawater causes the villagers to be moved to the relief centre, while the flood caused a lot of loss and damage to their properties. This flood happened because the phenomenon called king tide had occurred during that day. This king tide is formed when the Moon is very close to the Earth (at its closest perigee) and in the New Moon or Full Moon phase. This has brought sudden increase in tide magnitude. This phenomenon can be studied in order to help the early decision-making and proper planning to be rolled out. There are bunch of technologies that are made available which can be used to study the tide efficiently. One of the following technologies is by using space geodetic technique, the satellite altimeter. Satellite altimeter is the geodetic space technique which is designed for the study of the ocean. Compared to the conventional method of observing tide using tide gauge, this satellite altimeter can give the larger spatial coverage on tide especially on deep ocean region and near coastal region. In this research, sea level data is processed and derived using Radar Altimeter Database System (RADS). Altimetry-derived sea level data is used to monitor the king tide phenomenon in order to see their pattern and magnitude by comparing to the normal perigee days on the past year. This satellite altimeter is utilized to study the area of interest, which is at Malacca Strait and South China Sea. The result clearly shows that the perigee phenomenon which occurred on November 14 gave a significant impact on the tidal magnitude. The verification process between the satellite altimetry and tidal data also indicates a good argument for the root-mean-square error and correlation coefficient. The outcomes show that the satellite altimeter can be used as a tool to observe and monitor the king tide phenomenon particularly in large-scale area.