Stability and reliability of amphibious house for floodplain areas in Malaysia

Abstract

Flooding is one of the most common natural disasters in Malaysia and this phenomenon has been worsening due to current global warming condition. The disaster cost the government a huge amount of money and effort to handle it in terms of its catastrophe and mitigation strategy. It also has an adverse effect on land value in the floodplain area. Therefore, it is crucial to resort for more effective flood mitigation approach in Malaysia. This need has motivated this resea rch to develop a new sustainable and flexible flood mitigation measure known as amphibious house system within a floating urbanisation environment. This concept enabled the dwellers to live with flood rather than to confront it. The amphibious house system consists of the pit system concept with horizontal support, a specially formulated lightweight concrete material and special designed precast pontoon system, which provide floatation to the single storey house during flooding. This research is conducted in five main phases using qualitative and quantitative data collection approach to develop reliable and stable amphibious house. The initial approach consists of the interview with expert panels and using questionnaire survey to establish potential of using the amphibious house as a sustainable flood mitigation strategy. This followed with fuzzy materials selection for developing sustainable lightweight concrete pontoons composition and design. The amphibious house system has been vigorously analysed to meet the standard floatation and stability requirements in the hydraulic laboratory which includes hydraulic testing for drag forces, tilting angle and point load test on a floodplain model. Finally, this research produces an Excel based Visual Basic program to assist the designer to analyse the floating and stability of the amphibious system. The findings from this research have successfully established a novel concept of amphibious house system. This concept provides potential development of flood proof urbanisation especially in low lying area with very minimum risk to flood disaster.