Manifesto: From Acceptance to Resilience

‘Kota Tinggi kembali ditenggelami air selepas 15 tahun’

‘Several areas in JB, Kota Tinggi hit by floods again’

‘哥打市区灾情持续恶化恐重演15年前大水灾’

Bandar Kota Tinggi, the administrative town of Kota Tinggi District is one of the worst-affected districts by flood in Johor, due to its location near the Johor River. The average elevation of Kota Tinggi is 6 meters above mean sea level.

The flood issues have always been the nightmare that haunted the locals for many years, which makes them always get anxious when it rains heavily as they have bad memories of severe flooding here during the monsoon season.

While researching the flood issues in Bandar Kota Tinggi, I’ve come across some research papers that analyses on the adaptation and coping level of the locals to flood disasters, and their flood preparedness levels. The findings of these researches addressed that the older flood victims relied on their experiences in preparing for disaster, majority has no emergency plan and never participate in any disaster preparedness educational program. Moreover, the locals also never discussed with their neighbors about how to respond to floods or sought help from them. There were no residential committees formed to mobilize of educate people. In conclusion, most locals residents contended with the flood individually. From my evaluation, all this information is indirectly pointing to an issue -> the lack of flood education in the community of Bandar Kota Tinggi.

To collect more opinions from the Bandar Kota Tinggi residents to support my project statement, I had conducted a google form survey through social media platforms. The results showed that 56% of the respondents are not confident in their flood preparation and unclear about what to do in an emergency flood situation. Next, 80% of them agreed that it is important for everyone, especially the kids and elderlies to be aware of or know what to do during a flood situation. Out of my expectations, there is a 100% agreement on having a Flood Education Learning Centre inclusive of all age groups in Bandar Kota Tinggi. The area of knowledge that the respondents are interested in is covering from geographical, environmental, flood technology, safety precautions to emergency plans.

With all the information collected, I had decided to make use of this learning center to attempt a new approach in promoting flood education within Kota Tinggi community. The objectives of this building are:

• to increase flood risk awareness and preparedness levels of the locals
• to build flood resilient community
• to minimize flood loss and improve recovery processes
• to promote intergeneration and social interaction
• to increase the locals’ acceptance level on the flood issue

Another site issue in Bandar Kota Tinggi is the scattered socializing places in town that are not well-linked. This has indirectly caused scattered age groups in different areas due to different preferences of socializing place and the types of building around it. For instances, more elderlies can be seen in the area with more ‘kopitiams‘ whereas more middle-aged working adults are at area surrounded by government buildings. Appointing to this issue, I have an idea of creating an inclusive space that connects the social fabric of local community.

This manifesto shows my imagination of how this Community Flood Education Learning Center will possibly look like. The top left part is a few pictures showing flood history in Bandar Kota Tinggi. The river pouring out from the history cycle indicates the meaning of flowing from the past to towards the future, where we can see the community of Bandar Kota Tinggi is enjoying themselves, socializing, and at the same time learning in this learning center. The design of the spaces is elevated and separated due to consideration of the flood and also flexibility. Greeneries are added to create a healthy and calming environment. Blue is used as main color due to its relation with river, water and flood.

With all the ideations stated, I hope I can successfully include, combine and integrate all of them in the design of this building. So it can serve the community and also contribute to the flood issue in Bandar Kota Tinggi. The aspiration of this learning center is to witness the process of Kota Tinggi locals from understanding, accepting, adapting, and lastly be able to recover quickly from difficult flood conditions, which is reflected in the title of this manifesto: From acceptance to resilience.