[Malaysia] Flood Impacts across Scales- informing models of flood exposure and vulnerability via an integrated multi-scale approach

洪水对马来西亚和英国的社区都是一个威胁。计算机建模是一种广泛使用的方法来计算哪些地区容易受到洪水的影响。这使得政府机构、非政府组织和社区能够研究出如何投入时间和资源来保护处于危险中的地区。近年来，对洪水成因的了解迅速增加。我们现在有了很好的数据，比如降雨和温度等环境因素会影响洪水发生的地方。现在有了很好的气候变化模型。如果我们计算出洪水将在哪里发生，计算机模型现在就可以用来计算出洪水将如何在城市周围移动以及哪些建筑物将被淹没。仍然存在的一个问题是在这些模型中包含现实生活的复杂性。我们目前认为，同样的洪水总是会导致同样的后果。这使得模型运行得更快，但我们知道这不是洪水的工作原理。如果洪水发生在收获之前，它们可能会摧毁整个作物，但如果洪水发生在田地空无一物的时候，成本就会非常低。如果一场洪水接一场洪水，医院和发电站等设施可能在第一次洪水中受损，这意味着第二次洪水对人们生活的影响要大得多。通过研究社区如何受到洪水的影响，考虑到洪水的时间以及它们在时间上的密切联系，可以开发出一种真正的新方法来应对洪水风险。马来西亚是发展这些模式的好地方。中国经济发展迅速，因此新方法有机会在不断变化的环境中得到检验。同样，马来西亚的气候也包括季风，这对环境建模者的建模能力是一个很好的考验。从发展的角度来看，马来西亚是一个成功的故事，它正在迅速向发达国家过渡，但仍有大量人口处于危险之中，在大片地区，严重的洪水可能会阻碍发展。最后，在2014年的严重洪灾之后，马来西亚重新对开发创新的洪水风险方法产生了兴趣。我们在马来西亚开发一个新的洪水模型的方法将利用我们小组中不同的专家。英国和马来西亚的专家在过去十年中都在洪水研究方面投入了大量资金，将使我们能够将不同专业专家的技能结合起来。我们的经济学家将使用经济模型来了解经济的不同部门在未来可能发生的变化，以及它们如何受到洪水的影响。我们小组的环境科学家将使用现有的河流计算机模型来显示哪里的河流水位可能会高到足以引发洪水。我们的洪水工程师将应用新的水力学模型来展示洪水离开河流后是如何移动的。结合计算机模型输出的专家将把每一个模型组合成一个新的洪水风险模型。这个新模型将用于发现情景（我们无法控制的因素，如气候变化和日益城市化）和策略（我们可以控制的因素，如新的防洪和预警系统）的影响，这将有助于评估其中一些策略的有效性和物有所值。这将使未来的洪水规划在马来西亚更有针对性。我们希望马来西亚将成为这项研究的一个很好的案例研究，并希望东南亚和世界各地的其他国家将采用这一研究。

Flooding is a threat to communities in both Malaysia and the UK. Computer modelling is a widely used approach to working out which areas are vulnerable to flooding. This allows government agencies, NGOs and communities to work out how to invest time and resources to protect areas at risk. Understanding of the causes of flooding has increased rapidly in recent years. We now have good data on environmental factors like rain and temperature which can influence where floods will happen. There are now good models of climate change. If we work out where flooding is going to happen, computer models can now be used to work out how flood waters will move around cities and which buildings will flood. One problem that still remains is to include the complexities of real life in these models. We currently assume that the same flood will always lead to the same consequences. This makes models quicker to run, but we know it's not how flooding works. If floods occur just before harvests they can destroy entire crops, but if they occur when fields are empty the costs can be very low. If one flood follows another in quick succession, facilities like hospitals and power stations could remain damaged from the first flood, meaning that the second one has much greater impact on people's lives. With research into how communities are affected by flooding, which takes into account the timing of floods as well as how closely associated they are in time, a genuinely new approach to flood risk could be developed. Malaysia is a very good place to develop these models. Its economy is developing quickly, so new approaches have the opportunity to be tested in a changing environment. Similarly, climate in Malaysia includes monsoons, which are a good test of model ability for environmental modellers. From a development perspective, Malaysia is a success story which is rapidly transitioning towards developed status, but still has large numbers of people at risk and in large areas, development can be set back by severe floods. Lastly, following severe floods in 2014, there is a renewed interest in developing innovative flood risk approaches in Malaysia. Our approach to developing a new flood model in Malaysia would make use of the different experts in our group. Bringing together experts from the UK and Malaysia, both of which have invested significantly in flood research in the last decade, would allow us to combine skills from experts with different specialities. Our economists will use economic modelling to understand how different sectors of the economy might change in future and how they might be exposed to flooding. Our group's environmental scientists will use existing computer models of rivers to show where river levels are likely to become high enough to generate flooding. Our flooding engineers will apply new hydraulics models to show how flood waters move once they have left the rivers. Experts in combining computer model outputs will combine each of these into a new model of flood risks. This new model will be used to find the effects of scenarios (factors we can't control such as climate change and increasing urbanisation) and strategies (factors we can control such as new flood defences and warning systems) which will help to evaluate some of these strategies for their effectiveness and value for money. This will allow future flood planning to be better targeted within Malaysia. We hope that Malaysia will act as a good case study for this research and that it would be taken up by other countries in South East Asia and around the world.