TCAR - Typhoon Committee

the theme of the World Health Day on “Save
Lives - Make Hospitals Safe in Emergencies”. In
addition, the Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention
Institute of the National University of Malaysia held a
national forum on “Hospitals Safe from Disaster” in
conjunction with the World Health Day.
Trainings, seminars and drills are constantly
organized by Government agencies to enhance their
skills and expertise in disaster management as well
as to implement community-based disaster reduction
programs and awareness for vulnerable groups.
In our effort to establish a sustainable and
resilient environment for local communities, the
Government has encouraged the participation
and involvement of non-governmental organizations
(NGO) in disaster risk reduction programs. NGOs and
civil societies play a profound role in exploring a more
proactive function in enhancing public awareness in
disaster risk prevention, mitigation and preparedness.
Malaysia also declared 26 December as the disaster
awareness day since 2005. In 2008, the theme
chosen was “Disaster Risk Reduction on Highland
Development” aimed at promoting disaster risk
reduction measures in development planning.
Safety Guideline in Disaster and Crisis Situation
has been developed and distributed to schools and
community leaders in order to provide awareness
and guideline to the public to response accordingly
to disaster and crisis situation.
2.4.4 Regional Cooperation Achievements/
Results Regional and International Platform
Malaysia was succesfully organised The Third
Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk
Reduction (AMCDRR) on 2-4 December 2008 in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in collaboration with
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction (UNISDR) and other partners. The main
outcome of the Conference, the Kuala Lumpur
Declaration highlighted the importance of Multistakeholder
Partnership for Disaster Risk Reduction
with special emphasis on public-private-partnership
for disaster risk reduction and community-based
disaster risk reduction actions. The Conference was
attended by Ministers and government officials from
43 countries as well as representatives from relevant
international and regional organisations.
Malaysia also involves with international and
regional platforms organised by the Asian
Disaster Reduction Centre (ADRC), Asian Disaster
Preparedness Center (ADPC), Typhoon Commitee
(TC), United Nations Office for the Coordination of
TCAR
CHAPTER 1 - TYPHOON COMMITTEE ACTIVITIES
Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), and its subsidiary
bodies, the United Nations Disaster Assessment
and Coordination (UNDAC) and International Search
and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) as well as
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).
2.5 Improved Capacity to Generate and Provide
Accurate, Timely, and understandable Information
on Typhoon-related Threats.
2.5.1 Meteorological Achievements/Results
Hardware and Software Upgrade
Hardware upgrades are being done to the
data storage system of the Numerical Weather
Prediction system at the Malaysian Meteorological
Department. The size of the storage is to increase
by 4 terabytes and the data storage of all three
operational numerical weather systems (Two Shared
Memory Processor SGI 64 blade with each blade
having 2 dual core Intel Itanium processors and a
Linux cluster with two head nodes and nine compute
nodes whereby each node is having four single core
AMD Opteron processors) are to be shared together
using an additional server via a gigabit ethernet
switch.
2.5.2 Research, Training, and Other
Achievements/Results
Research and Training
Current on-going research activities at MMD
include “Heavy Rainfall Episodes During The
Northeast Monsoon Season”, “The Impact of Tropical
Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal On the Rainfall
in Malaysia”, “Verification of the MMD-WAM
Significant Wave Height Gridded Output using In
Situ Measurement and Satellite Derived Data”, “Case
Studies of Northeast Monsoon Surges”, “ Climate
Extremes Projection for Malaysia” and “Preliminary
studies of Ensemble Forecasting at the Malaysian
Meteorological Department”.
The objectives of the “Heavy Rainfall Episodes
During The Northeast Monsoon Season” and “Case
Studies of Northeast Monsoon Surges” studies
are to examine the precursors and maintenance
of heavy rainfall episodes over the east coast of
Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak during the
Northeast Monsoon season from November to
February.
Rainfall records of local meteorological stations
from 1951 to 2008, reanalysis gridded NCEP data,
ERA40 data from ECMWF and JRA data from JMA
are analyzed to study the evolution of vorticity,
2009
81