Do we care enough? revisiting land subsidence and coastal spatial planning policy in Semarang, Indonesia

Abstract

Land subsidence is a common unsustainable pattern of land use on young sediment coasts worldwide, such as Semarang coastal area. The impact had already transformed its northeast area become permanently tidal flooded, damage in houses and streets, and economic loss. However, local government efforts are noticeably as band-aid measures, which can lead to further mismanagement in halting land subsidence. Given that, this research aimed to evaluate how the latest coastal spatial planning policy in Semarang responds to its geological hazards. This type of research is a content analysis of various spatial planning policy documents, coastal zoning plans, regional spatial planning, and strategic environmental assessment. The results show that, although land subsidence is already mentioned, no specific zoning plan or development programs were applied. Also, rather than creating more in-depth law in groundwater management or other activities that exaggerate land subsidence rates, the northeast shorelines’ structural measures are preferable. A key point of the result concluded that the local government should develop more strict laws in land subsidence to prevent more intense activities on land, together with vigorous law enforcement. Any structural measures should be planned and built effectively to avert more threatening problems to the regions.

Housing challenges in sinking coastal city: rethinking urban housing in subsidence area for a more resilient community

“…Our prior study Hamdani et al, [42] found that land subsidence is currently not incorporated in spatial planning. In this continued study, we found that in City Official's One Map website, we could easily find the land subsidence map.…”

Evaluation of Development Policy through Water Environmental Carrying Capacity Analysis in North Kendeng Mountain, Indonesia

“…This technique was commonly used to evaluate development policy. Content analysis was formerly used as a tool to understand how a theoretical concept was being interpreted into policy (Handayani et al, 2019), the comprehensiveness of policy in addressing environmental hazards (Hamdani et al, 2020), the capability of strategic planning in resolving land degradation (Oliveira et al, 2018), and developing inclusive recommendation in updating smart city strategies (Bednarska-Olejniczak et al, 2019).…”

Combining Landsat, VIIRS Night-time Light, and Sentinel-1 SAR for Spatial Flood Risk Assessment in Coastal Area: an Earth Engine Cloud Computing Process

“…Strategies and adaptive mitigation measures need to be developed to reduce the risk of disasters in coastal areas, particularly floods [5]. This problem becomes "homework" for all stakeholders, particularly the government, considering that coastal areas undergo continuous dynamics in natural conditions, socio-economic factors, and oceanographic processes [11,12]. Disaster risk is proportional to the hazards present in a location but varies based on vulnerability and capacity [13].…”

“…Utilizing cloud computing is an efficient way to conduct flood risk assessment, as concluded by the study. Some researcher have explained that this technology involves utilizing virtual cloud or computer resources for computational purposes [11,12]. This method could be implemented by Google Earth Engine (GEE) to assess flood risks by relying on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for inundation extraction and Landsat-8 for evaluating the distribution of affected land use [18].…”