Giving flood management the Dutch treatment

KUALA LUMPUR: The government’s efforts to seek flood mitigation expertise from the Netherlands is the best move to reduce the billions of ringgit in costs spent annually to implement flood disaster management systems.

Assoc Prof Dr Mohamad Hidayat Jamal of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Skudai, Johor, said such a government commitment will reduce the losses suffered yearly by the people affected.

“The flood issue is a critical one, which needs an urgent solution. The Netherlands has vast experience in managing flood risks as more than 26% of the country is below sea level, with an estimated 60% of its land in high-risk areas.

“Average annual rainfall in the Netherlands is 800mm compared with Malaysia, which gets 3,000mm a year. Our rainfall patterns and causes of flood may differ from other countries,” he told BK.

Prof Mohamad Hidayat, who is director of the university’s Water and Environmental Engineering Department under its Civil Engineering Faculty, said due to the floods they faced, the Dutch have been more creative in successfully implementing flood risk management methods and reducing costs.

He said that among the approaches used by the country were to build structures such as storm-surge barriers, dykes and flood bunds, while non-structural matters were handled through more effective use of land, introducing the room-for-river concept and improving flood forecasts through artificial intelligence.

“In addition, the Netherlands also pioneered long-term flood risk management based on the concept of nature-based solutions, which emphasises the use of green flood risk management methods.

“Experience and expertise sharing with the Netherlands will also help the Irrigation and Drainage Department as well as the National Disaster Management Agency to come up with a plan to deal with the issue and manage national flood risk,” he said.

Prof Mohamad Hidayat said the Netherlands also declared its southern city of Delft as a specialist in the field of water engineering.

“Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is renowned in the field of engineering and the IHE Delft Institute of Water Education is a special institution under the Unesco that focuses on water issues and solutions from land to sea,” he added.

Persatuan Ekologi Malaysia president Prof Dr Ahmad Ismail said the government’s move to strengthen flood management needs sufficient preparation for it to be successful.

“We must be equipped with the knowledge, expertise, technology, and suitable facilities.

“The Netherlands is a country that we can emulate as a global model for flood management, apart from China, the United States and Australia,” he said.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said Malaysia will obtain the Netherlands’ expertise to improve flood mitigation systems to overcome the flooding faced by the country every year.

Anwar expressed confidence that expert help from the Netherlands will be able to reduce national expenditure, which is up to a billion ringgit annually, for the implementation of flood disaster management.

He said this after receiving a courtesy call from his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte at Seri Perdana in Putrajaya.