Zaharah Mohd Yusoff

Climate variability and anthropogenic impacts on a semi-distributed monsoon catchment runoff simulations

Recent studies has showed that the modification on land use have an impact to hydrology particularly flood and global climate variability. Therefore, the major factor decided to the effect of hydrological responses in contributing flood disaster in this research, is land use changes as well as climate variability. This study tries to provide a framework mainly to apply a semi-distributed hydrological model in a monsoon catchment and to quantify the relative contributions of physio-environment (i.e. land use change and climate change) effects to hydrological response and flooding in the River Kelantan catchment. The HEC-HMS hydrological model was utilized to show that land use change, predominantly deforestation for agricultural purposes, has potentially caused some increases in hydrological response over time (i.e. 16 years) in the upstream area. However, the predicted effect of precipitation change was about three-to-four times greater than that of land use change in the upstream area. In the downstream area land use change was predicted by the model to have led to a very small decrease in hydrological response between 1988 and 2004 compared to the precipitation change. It is plausible to suggest that during the monsoon season, with heavy precipitation and the large area involved, the effect of land use change on the hydrological response may reduce and allow precipitation to become the dominant factor in causing changes in peak discharge and runoff volume.

Integrating open source GIS and Google Earth™ for managing rural waterborne outbreaks

Limitation of cost and staff skill in using GIS technologies for health sectors are common barriers in developing countries. Cholera is the life-threatening disease that gives a major problem to the global region. This study demonstrates the potential applications open source GIS software and Virtual globes technology (e.g. Google Earth™) in local waterborne outbreaks mapping and analysis. This integrated technologies showed the disease database and map could dynamically display and qualitatively create a model hypothesis regarding relationship between the disease and its potential risk factors. Quantum GIS (QGIS) as the Open Source GIS software used to create geodatabase and map of cholera risk distribution, and then the software was combined with Google Earth™ to analyze the cholera spatial-temporal pattern in the high risk areas (e.g. populous and coastal areas). The technologies are not only strengthen local public health capacity but also assist policy makers and health practitioners to implement GIS and mapping technologies in their disease control programme and research.

Reducing employee travelling time through smart commuting

Extremely congested roads will definitely delay the arrival time of each trip.This certainly impacted the journey of employees. Tardiness at the workplace has become a perturbing issue for companies where traffic jams are the most common worker excuses. A depressing consequence on daily life and productivity of the employee occurs. The issues of commuting distance between workplace and resident area become the core point of this research. This research will emphasize the use of Geographical Information System (GIS) technique to explore the distance parameter to the employment area and will focus on the accessibility pattern of low-cost housing. The research methodology consists of interview sessions and a questionnaire to residents of low-cost housing areas in Melaka Tengah District in Malaysia. The combination of these processes will show the criteria from the selected parameter for each respondent from their resident area to the employment area. This will further help in the recommendation of several options for a better commute or improvement to the existing routes and public transportations system. Thus enhancing quality of life for employees and helping to reduce stress, decrease lateness, absenteeism and improving productivity in workplace.

Empirical estimation of school siting parameter towards improving children's safety

Distance from school to home is a key determination in ensuring the safety of hildren. School siting parameters are made to make sure that a particular school is located in a safe environment. School siting parameters are made by Department of Town and Country Planning Malaysia (DTCP) and latest review was on June 2012. These school siting parameters are crucially important as they can affect the safety, school reputation, and not to mention the perception of the pupil and parents of the school. There have been many studies to review school siting parameters since these change in conjunction with this ever-changing world. In this study, the focus is the impact of school siting parameter on people with low income that live in the urban area, specifically in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. In achieving that, this study will use two methods which are on site and off site. The on site method is to give questionnaires to people and off site is to use Geographic Information System (GIS) and Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS), to analyse the results obtained from the questionnaire. The output is a maps of suitable safe distance from school to house. The results of this study will be useful to people with low income as their children tend to walk to school rather than use transportation.