Tarmiji Masron

Local Government Service Efficiency: Public Participation Matters

Abstract—The service delivery efficiency by local authorities is one of the key elements in developing the livable cities. The involvement of local communities in measuring the efficiency of service delivery as a primary source of information should be practiced by all local authorities. However, local authorities are more likely to choose only some of the information given by the local community to improve the services delivery efficiency. This may be due to the low-level of involvement by local community for the dissemination of information to local authorities. This scenario will cause a conflict between local authorities and local communities. Local authorities should take into account the local communities view in measuring the service delivery efficiencies to create the livable cities. This study is important to assess the level of community involvement in sustainable urban development process. This study will identify the importance of community involvement in measuring the public service delivery. This study was conducted interviews among 360 respondents in Manjung and Kerian District in Perak. This study found that the level of involvement among the local communities in disseminating information to local authorities is still low.

Traditional and Local Ecological Knowledge for Land Use Mapping

Land use changes are a key driver in global environmental changes and had a significant impact on the climate at all scales. Various human activities that took place thousands of years ago have an impact on the earths surface. Today, with the limited supply and high demand, land use crisis became a big issue for the most countries. Changes in land use are not actually only providing a history of the area, but it also describes the way of life of its local communities. In the interdisciplinary research for land use study, cultural values, knowledge and perceptions of knowledge has been recognized as a major factor in determining the adopted approach applied in land use management in that area. Therefore, this paper tries to evaluate the role and potential of the integration of TLEK and GIS in mapping the series of changes in land use.Keyword: Local knowledge, TLEK, land use mapping & conceptual framework

A study on integrated community based flood mitigation with remote sensing technique in Kota Bharu, Kelantan

This study is conducted to establish a community based flood management system that is integrated with remote sensing technique. To understand local knowledge, the demographic of the local society is obtained by using the survey approach. The local authorities are approached first to obtain information regarding the society in the study areas such as the population, the gender and the tabulation of settlement. The information about age, religion, ethnic, occupation, years of experience facing flood in the area, are recorded to understand more on how the local knowledge emerges. Then geographic data is obtained such as rainfall data, land use, land elevation, river discharge data. This information is used to establish a hydrological model of flood in the study area. Analysis were made from the survey approach to understand the pattern of society and how they react to floods while the analysis of geographic data is used to analyse the water extent and damage done by the flood. The final result of this research is to produce a flood mitigation method with a community based framework in the state of Kelantan. With the flood mitigation that involves the communitys understanding towards flood also the techniques to forecast heavy rainfall and flood occurrence using remote sensing, it is hope that it could reduce the casualties and damage that might cause to the society and infrastructures in the study area.

Land use changes analysis for Pantai Chenang, Langkawi using spatial patch analysis technique in relation to coastal tourism.

ABSTRACT Landscape change study has brought spatial analysis and metric indices to the forefront of tourism study. Land use transformation, habitat loss and fragmentation are typical processes of landscape change study. Advancement in geographical information system (GIS) with the combination of Patch Analysis program has made landscape change study in spatially assessing the impacts of coastal tourism development possible. In this study, nine land use categories from 1966 to 2012 were delineated and the landscape metrics were performed at class level using Patch Analysis 5.0 and ArcGIS 10.0. Four indices were then computed: number of patches (NumP), edge density (ED), mean patch size (MPS) and mean shape index (MSI). The landscape metrics results of the study show that: (1) NumP associated with build-up, facilities/utilities and recreational patches followed similar patterns, of increasing trend from 1966 to 2012; (2) MPS index show no clear patterns between the land uses; (3) ED for build-up area, facilities/utilities, recreational area and water bodies increased between 1966 and 2012, which showed that classes were becoming more diverse and more abundant; (4) MSI index showed no clear patterns except for the recreational area (increasing) and water bodies (decreasing), which indicated that the recreational class was becoming more complex in patch shape, while the water bodies shape become simpler.

Prediction of reef fish spawning aggregations using remote sensing: A review

Spawning aggregation is a very important occurrence to particular reef fish species as they use this opportunity to reproduce. However, due to their predictable nature, these aggregations have always been vulnerable to overexploitation. This problem leads to the importance of identifying the exact time and location for reef fish spawning aggregation. Thus, this paper review a little bit about spawning aggregation of reef fish as well as their characteristics, and problems regarding this phenomena. The use of remote sensing in marine applications is also described here in order to discuss how remote sensing can be utilize to predict reef fish spawning aggregation. Based on the unique geomorphological characteristics of the spawning aggregation, remote sensing seems to be a powerful tool to determine their exact times and locations. It has been proved that satellite imagery was able to delineate specific reef geomorphologies such as shelf edges and reef promontories. Despite of the widely use of remote sensing in marine applications, in fact there are still lack of studies had been carried out regarding spawning aggregations of reef fish due to the skeptical point-of-view by certain researchers over the capability of this technique. However, there is actually no doubt that the use of remote sensing will provide a better hand to the authorities in order to establish a more effective monitoring and conservation plan for these spawning aggregations.