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International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Open Access Journal

ISSN: 2222-6990

Landslide Risk in Kuala Lumpur: Examining the Impact of Shifting Rainfall Patterns Amidst Climate Change

Nurafiqah Muhamad Nazi, Nuriah Abd Majid

http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v14-i4/20832

Open access

Climate change has altered seasonal precipitation and temperature in a certain region. Unpredictable weather conditions have significantly increased the risk of climatic hazards, especially landslides. This paper studies the rainfall variables such as rainfall amount and rain days and their correlation towards landslide events in the capital city of Malaysia; the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur. Pearson correlation analysis found that the rain days variable has a higher significant positive correlation with landslide incidents compared to the rainfall amount variable. Only landslide incidents in the year 2010 show a significant negative correlation with rain days (r = -0.166). Both rainfall amount and rain days attributes in the years 2011, 2012, and 2015 show a significant positive correlation with landslide incidents reported. Meanwhile, landslide incidents reported in the years 2012 and 2013 show a significant negative correlation with rainfall amount but positively correlated with rain days attribute for both years. Further investigation using linear regression analysis also corresponds to the same result where landslide events increase by 0.039 for every unit of rain days but landslide incidents remain constant when there is an increase for every unit of rainfall. Therefore, rainfall amount was not a significant predictor in this study. Since land scarcity is the main issue in Kuala Lumpur, the results of this study help to provide insight on rainfall pattern and behavior for proper urbanization especially in changing climate condition.