Identification of Potential Impacts of Climate Change and the Adaptation Options in Low-Cost Strata Residential Building in Malaysia

Abstract

Climate change phenomenon such as continuing rising of global temperature, extreme variations in rainfall, increase rapidly of extreme weather events causing a wide range of impacts that affect almost every aspect of human lives from water supply and environmental to housing and communities in number of ways. Being a worldwide phenomenon, there has been growing interest to study how climate change and its impacts unfold regionally, including in Malaysia, for instance in strata residential properties that provide multi spaces living to the community. Residential strata buildings play a key role in providing liveable community places and environment especially in higher density of population and greater construction of buildings and infrastructure e.g. Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor Bahru. Thus, this review paper presents a comprehensive overview of the latest research and development of climate change adaptation in residential buildings. The primary objective of this paper is to identify the potential impact of climate change and adaptation options in low-cost strata residential building. These impacts and adaptation options were selected based on an extensive literature review. Literature available on climate change in Malaysia is thoroughly reviewed to identify possible changes in temperature, rainfall, extreme weather events, fl oods, river discharges, soil moisture, sea level rise, salinity, etc., that could affect the property sector of Malaysia. Finally, this paper identifi es and outlines the potential risk and impacts that a low-cost strata residential buildings could have on the vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity of buildings in a way to develop the risk-based adaptation framework which currently is still limited and will be benefi cial in planning and managing liveable community especially in low-cost strata residential in Malaysia.