RISK EXPOSURE OF COASTAL INUNDATION FROM STORM SURGE IN THE NORTHERN PART OF MALAYSIAN BORNEO Nurrul Fazlina Osman (a*), Ejria Saleh (a, b), Justin Sentian (b)
a) Borneo Marine Research Institute, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
*nfazlina212[at]gmail.com
b) Natural Disaster Research Centre, Faculty of Science and Natural Resources, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
Abstract
Coastal communities greatly depend on the marine resources for their means of subsistence. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events affected coastal ecosystems and socio-economic activities. The most common extreme event that occurs in the northern part of Malaysian Borneo is the storm surge. The objectives of this study are to evaluate the magnitude of the coastal inundation based three categories of the storm surge scenarios and to identify the risk exposure rank of nine study sites. Field trips and interviews were conducted between March 2020 and March 2023. Semi-structured open-ended questionnaires were applied to 100 respondents for coastal inundation (storm surge) risk exposure assessment. Results showed that Tongkang area on west side of Kudat and Tajau Laut, Tanjong Kapor and Landung Ayang in the east side of Kudat were affected from 3 categories of coastal inundation. The east side of the study sites (Tanjong Kapor and Landung Ayang) experience high risk exposure due to lack of coastal ecosystem richness, development of population centers, have high population and low land area. While the west side of the study sites faces high impact on social services especially the tourism sectors, although west side of Kudat have high multiple livelihood dependency they are susceptibility to storm surges, increasing development areas (for tourism) also might be threaten the ecosystem richness. This study indicates that Tanjong Kapor and Landung Ayang are highly exposed to risk and require adaptation and mitigation measures.
