S’wak forges collaboration with UTHM, University of Salford to tackle global climate change

KUCHING, Sept 14 (Bernama) -- The Sarawak government has forged a collaboration with Universiti Tun Hussien Onn Malaysia (UTHM) and University of Salford, United Kingdom, to develop innovative technological solutions that can tackle global and industrial challenges due to global climate change.

Sarawak Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg said that through this collaboration, the state government would, through the Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA), use several digital platforms to collect the required data.

“The data is important for us to make decisions and also policies should a disaster occur and, thus, reduce the burden borne by the people and businesses. This is our approach to reducing the risk of whatever happens.

“The said data will be analysed at the command centre level and they (command centre) can give their proposals to the government on what should be done as a solution in facing the disaster,” he told a media conference after the launching of Transcend Sarawak at the Tegas Digital Village here today.

Speaking at the event, Abang Johari said the current climate change could create various natural disasters.

“For example, during my working visit to South Korea last week, while on our flight, the typhoon was about to hit (South Korea) and the data arrived (to inform the pilot) to divert the flight from approaching Seoul… the data that you get from the centre gives you the signal so that you can avoid risks.

“Any disaster that happens, we have the data in advance which comes from the convergence of data in order to inform people and engage them within the particular vicinity,” he said.

Meanwhile, University of Salford principal investigator of Transcend Project and THINKLab Prof Terrence Fernando said in his speech that smart resilience needed to be taken into account in developing smart cities.

“According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, depending on the way we control greenhouse gas emissions, we will have different climate change pathways.

“Under the existing trajectory, the world is on track for a global average temperature rise of at least 2.7 degrees Celcius by 2100. Therefore, it is important that we consider the concept of resilience in our neighbourhood, city and regional development plan,” he added.

-- BERNAMA