RESEARCH STRATEGY
Our current research strategy will focus on topics as proposed by the available expertise and resources based on the current Malaysian societal challenges and global impact factors. This bottom up approach can spurred the academics creativity as the researchers have free hand to exploit ideas and interests based on their professional know how. However, we will continuously monitoring the national and global activities to make sure we deliver to what the Malaysian society needs in the future. We have to maintain comprehensive integration and implementation of the DRR from community level to global level, by using a DRR framework of Risk Assessment, Risk Management and Risk Communication.
The proposed Research Center is a virtual or open concept research center, it may not necessary limited to a particular laboratory or a particular set of personnel. By definition, it consists of groups of community from wide spectrum of society, students, academics staff and even oversea academics too. At the initial stage, the research will be kick-started with projects related to DRR in Kuala Lumpur. However, we observe that other urban cities in Malaysia and ASEAN countries are experiencing higher disaster risks, due to the rapid urbanization and globalization in the regions. Our main activities will focus on, but not limited to, Kuala Lumpur DRR projects. We will carry out other activities that could achieve our objectives as stated below.
The main activities of (U) DRR Research Center @ Utar are committed to work as a team to carry out research and development works in the challenging issues, namely:
- To support UTAR's staffs and students to reach out the local society for emphasizing DRR in Malaysia, focusing on Greater Kuala Lumpur.
- To support local government, communities and NGOs to promote DRR in Malaysia, focusing on Greater Kuala Lumpur. To research on disaster risk communication of Greater Kuala Lumpur and other urban cities in Malaysian and ASEAN region.
- To continue exploring new ideas on international as well as domestic collaborations on DRR and hence increase UTAR's capacity of outreaching activities for safer, resilient, and sustainable societies.
At current stage, we have identified some of the following key players to kick-start the center R&D. In the mean time, we will proceed to seek alliances with other educational institutions, such as: KTAR, DRR workshops training colleges, local and oversea universities. This will further enhance our man-power strength and synergized outputs.
