Siti Norezam Othman

Developing a disaster education program for community safety and resilience: The preliminary phase

Resilience encompasses both the principles of preparedness and reaction within the dynamic systems and focuses responses on bridging the gap between pre-disaster activities and post-disaster intervention and among structural/non-structural mitigation. Central to this concept is the ability of the affected communities to recover their livelihood and inculcating necessary safety practices during the disaster and after the disaster strikes. While these ability and practices are important to improve the community safety and resilience, such factors will not be effective unless the awareness is present among the community. There have been studies conducted highlighting the role of education in providing awareness for disaster safety and resilience from a very young age. However for Malaysia, these area of research has not been fully explored and developed based on the specific situational and geographical factors of high-risk flood disaster locations. This paper explores the importance of disaster education program in Malaysia and develops into preliminary research project which primary aim is to design a flood disaster education pilot program in Kampung Karangan Primary School, Kelantan, Malaysia.Resilience encompasses both the principles of preparedness and reaction within the dynamic systems and focuses responses on bridging the gap between pre-disaster activities and post-disaster intervention and among structural/non-structural mitigation. Central to this concept is the ability of the affected communities to recover their livelihood and inculcating necessary safety practices during the disaster and after the disaster strikes. While these ability and practices are important to improve the community safety and resilience, such factors will not be effective unless the awareness is present among the community. There have been studies conducted highlighting the role of education in providing awareness for disaster safety and resilience from a very young age. However for Malaysia, these area of research has not been fully explored and developed based on the specific situational and geographical factors of high-risk flood disaster locations. This paper explores the importance of disaster education pr...

Sustainable rice production and its impact on the rice value chain: A case study of rural paddy farm in Kedah

System of Rice Intensification (SRI) method had contributed towards environmental sustainability through improving paddy ecosystem, better sustainable economic due to improving paddy production and sales and social sustainability through local community development through community activity and health. This study aimed to find out whether the innovative practices of SRI affect the rice value chain and to determine the roles, activities of the actors in the value chain as well as challenges that impacted the value chain. Using interview as data collection method, case samples were selected from various SRI paddy site in Kedah. The findings indicated that implementing SRI practices in organic paddy cultivation had caused the value chain to be different from conventional paddy value chain in terms of actor and effect of middle man subject to the small scale paddy production. For organic rice value chain to become competitive, roles, activities and challenges were identified so that supports could be provide...