Loss of Life Estimation using Life Safety Model for Dam Breach Flood Disaster in Malaysia

The need for an emergency disaster management related to dam has risen up in recent years. This is due to uncertainties in global weather predictions which also affect local Malaysian area. With unpredictable prolonged rainy weather, concerns on events that could lead to flooding has triggered the authority to review the evacuation strategies in critical locations. This paper describes an investigation on the effect of early warning system and people response delay to the rate of fatality in the event of flooding due to dam breach. The Life Safety Model is utilized as a tool for the simulation of people vehicle and building response to 2D hydraulic flow of the river originated from the dam. The study area is based on Kenyir Dam and its surrounding vicinity. A number of scenarios are simulated namely cases with and without early warning system. For the case with early warning system, different triggering time is also investigated. On top of that, the effect of people response delay to the warning system is simulated. It was found that early warning system plays a critical role in reducing the number of fatalities due to flooding. Equally important is the time taken for the community to start evacuating when triggered by the early warning system. From the result LSM, optimum evacuation parameters could be identified and used for the purpose of design, planning and implementation of local emergency evacuation plan in the event of dam-related flooding.