Sabrina Ho Abdullah

Simulating and monitoring future land-use trends using CA-Markov and LCM models

Simulating and monitoring future land-use trends is one of the major challenges for researchers, decision makers, and local authorities in terms of data, methods, and models that should be used to create a realistic and sustainable land-use planning process. This study aims to use spatio-temporal data and models to generate realistic simulation and assessment of future land-use trends in Seremban, Malaysia. For this purpose, four land-use maps of 1984, 1990, 2000, and 2010 were used. The CA-Markov model was used to simulate future land-use change of 2020 and 2030 in Seremban. After that, a Land Change Modeler (LCM) was used to assess and monitor future land-use patterns. The results confirm that the agriculture area will be affected by urban uses in the next decade in Seremban. This increase in urban uses is due to the impact of the steady increase in economic and demographic development. These results indicate the necessity to create new policies in the city to protect the sustainability of land uses in Seremban.

Landscape analysis of urban growth patterns in Seremban, Malaysia, using spatio-temporal data

Urban growth is one of the major issues that have played a significant role in destroying the ecosystem in recent years. Landscape analysis is an important technique widely used to evaluate urban growth patterns. In this study, four land-use maps from 1984, 1990, 2000, and 2010 have been used to analyze an urban landscape. The values of a built-up area were initially computed using a geographic information system environment based on the spatial gradient approach. Mathematical matrices were then used to determine the amount of change in urban patches in each direction. Results of the number of patches, landscape shape index, aggregation index, and total edges confirmed that the urban patches in Seremban, Malaysia, have become more dispersed from 2000 to 2010. The urban patches have also become more continuous, especially in the north-western part of Seremban as a result of the urban development in the Nilai District. These results indicate the necessity to create new policies in the city to protect the sustainability of the land use of Seremban.

Exploring the Relationship Among Issues on Awareness in Practicing Waste Minimization (Malaysia)

This study is carried out to identify the level of awareness associated with waste minimization practices and industrial solid waste. It focuses on the issues of ‘lack of awareness and information’ as preventive factors in waste minimization practices by industries in Malaysia. About 30 industries were randomly sampled from the industrial area using a structured questionnaire, and employs severity index and correlation analysis for data analysis. The correlation analysis is used to identify the relationship between issues in this research. Results revealed that the lack of accurate or sufficient knowledge of waste minimization practices is a serious barrier in waste minimization practices among the industries given the severity index value of 64 %. However, the results also show a statistical significant relationship on the lack of accurate or sufficient knowledge and untrained personnel (r = 0.75, p < 0.01), absence of experts (r = 0.66, p < 0.01) and limited technical information (r = 0.61, p < 0.01).

Life Cycle Assessment at a Sawmill Manufacturing Company in Terengganu, Malaysia

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is known as a tool to evaluate and assessing the impacts of products towards the environment. It will include all the process or activities used and waste released into the environment. In detail, LCA involved the collection and evaluation of quantitative data on the inputs and outputs of material, energy and waste flows associated with a product over its entire life cycle. The objective of this study is to identify potential impact of sawmill manufacturing process. This study followed the four phases as stipulated in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 14040 series of standard) for conducting LCA studies such as goal and scope definition, Life Cycle Inventory analysis (LCI), Life Cycle Impacts Assessment (LCIA), and Interpretation.