Mohd. Razali Mahmud

The potential of mangrove forest as a bioshield in Malaysia

Using mangroves as a potential coastal bioshield has been intensively studied and tested in the past 10 years. Without a doubt, these studies suggest mangroves are able to attenuate waves thus make it perfect bioshield against tsunami, storm surges, erosion and other coastal disaster. This paper synthesis state of mangroves forests in Peninsular Malaysia towards the realisation of adopting mangrove as main coastal bioshield. Mangrove forest area degradation mainly caused by the land reclamation for agriculture and aquaculture. The situation has been exacerbated by the rapid growth of coastal communities that eventually become the potential victim for coastal disaster. Despite the rigorous effort to replant and rehabilitate, the incomplete hydrodynamic study of the site often leads to failure. An artificial structure like seawall and wave breaker for coastal defence are not sustainable anymore with the constant cost increment over the years. Though nurturing mangrove to serve as bioshield already begun before 2005, Malaysia commitment in mangrove bioshield officially become national agenda under “The Tenth Malaysia Plan 2010-2015”, by the bill on “Climate adaptation: protecting the nation from the impact of climate change” and “Enhancing conservation of the nations ecological assets”. Now the implementation period has been concluded, further research in waves attenuation rate need to extend to precisely describe the capability of mangrove as bioshield in Peninsular Malaysia coastal.

Evaluating satellite-derived bathymetry accuracy from Sentinel-2A high-resolution multispectral imageries for shallow water hydrographic mapping

The wide-ranging evolution of remote sensing technology has offered a promising application to the hydrographic surveying, the Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB). SDB is a contemporary acquisition technique which derives bathymetric data from multispectral satellite imagery for various hydrographic purposes. The introduction and availability of the chargeless Sentinel-2A multispectral satellite data in the region, has inspired the National Hydrographic Centre (NHC) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) to collaborate in assessing the level of accuracy provided by Sentinel-2A imageries as a data sources for shallow water hydrographic mapping. The assessment is concentrating on both empirical algorithm methods, Lyzenga and Stumpf models in two different seabed topology conditions. Both Lyzenga and Stumpf model produced almost identical results for the area with normal gradient seabed. Conversely, for the rough and irregular seabed surface, results from Lyzenga model was much better compared to Stumpfs. Lyzenga model has delivered better results where a total of 166,747 (36.23%) of depths samples achieved the IHO minimum survey order standard compared to 103,418 (22.47%) by Stumpf model. Thus, this paper would deliberate the detail findings from the study primarily on the accuracy level of the Sentinel-2A data for SDB hydrographic mapping application over the tropical environmental setting in Malaysia

Implication of south China sea arbitration to Malaysia (case study: Philippine versus China)

The South China Sea holds some portion of a fundamental course for oceanic exchange and transport for East Asia and Southeast Asia States and their trading accomplices in Asia, Africa, and beyond. Due to its potential as important shipping lane, exploitation of oil and natural gas deposits, and marine production, there has been a dispute between countries for the South China Sea. Therefore, this research focuses on the sovereignty of the South China Sea and all the features located in its area. There are six countries involve in this dispute which are China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippine, Brunei and Malaysia. The main objective of this research is the delimitation of maritime boundaries for each country involved in the dispute and their respective claim of the features. The software that was used in this research is the AutoCAD 2007 and ArcGIS. The basepoint along the shoreline are connected to form the baseline where it is form this baseline that the maritime zones were being determined. The result has shown that from the extension of Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 nautical miles from the baseline, the main focus of features in South China Sea, which is the Spratly Island, belong to either Malaysia, Brunei or Philippines and out of the maritime zone of the other three country. However, the dispute between all the six countries can only be solved if each country agreed to bring this issues the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for mutual solution.

GPS-based attitude determination for airborne remote sensing

The design and testing of a GPS based attitude determination system for the direct georeferencing of airborne imagery is discussed. By combining dual-frequency, high data rate GPS receivers with a relatively simple gyroscopic attitude and heading reference system, position and orientation data can be collected at a rate which matches that of a typical airborne scanner, with an accuracy adequate for georeferencing imaged features to a few metres.