Flood Resilience of Housing Development Through Land Governance: A Thematic Review

Global climate change has brought about significant modifications in weather patterns, impacting the interaction between weather and water-related elements. As a result, there has been an increase in hydrometeorological disasters, which rank as the second most severe natural catastrophe. Nevertheless, over half of the world population lives in flood-prone areas. This has led global and local actors to develop more comprehensive and multidiscipline flood resilience and mitigation. Despite the existing awareness, there is a void of past research discussing the utilisation of land governance as a tool to enhance flood resilience in housing development. This thematic review synthesised research conducted between 2019 and 2023 on flood-resilient housing development through land governance. ATLAS.ti 8 was employed. A keyword search on SCOPUS, Science Direct, and Emerald Insight databases identified 175 peer-reviewed journal articles. After inclusion and exclusion, a total of 109 articles were reviewed. The comprehensive examination of these articles on flood resilience revealed that the articles explored four pillars: institutional and governance concerns, socio-economic concerns, disaster management concerns, and environmental concerns. The findings from these articles will form the basis for future extensive studies to strengthen flood resilience in Malaysian housing development through effective land governance strategies.


Introduction
Rapid urbanisation, climate change, and the growth of the world population are the key worldwide forces that increase the vulnerability of urban people in developing countries (Shiiba et al., 2023;Mitchell et al., 2015). As urban growth grows into hazard-prone locations, much of the climatic impact is focused in metropolitan and coastal areas. This development is frequently characterised by low-quality dwellings in informal settlements or slums on unlawfully occupied or subdivided land. Also, UNDESA (2019) projects that by the year 2050, 68 per cent of the world population will reside in urban regions, which is an increase of 55 per cent from the present percentage.
According to a report by the World Bank (2021), more than 90 per cent of the world population are vulnerable to flood disasters between the years 2035 and 2044. In Malaysia, at least 5 million people live in flood-prone areas (Maznieda et al., 2022), which cover 29,800 square kilometres in size and account for 9 per cent of Malaysia's total landmass. The areas receive high-volume rainfall, causing their vulnerability to flood-related disasters (Castillo et al., 2023;Hasan et al., 2019). This hydrometeorological disasters have caused diverse impacts, notably a substantial financial shortfall within the nation. The initial significant flood occurrence in Malaysia dated back to 1926, which had a widespread impact on the entire state (Williamson, 2016). For instance, in 1971, a flood of significant magnitude transpired and nearly submerged the entirety of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city, and multiple other states. This event resulted in a financial loss of MYR 177 million (Chan et al., 2022). These calamities frequently transpire, particularly in metropolitan regions and regions situated at lower elevations.
This phenomenon can be attributed to the fact that a significant number of major urban centres in the nation are situated within floodplains and along riverbanks (Kumar et al., 2021). This is the result of the eagerness to carry out developmental initiatives in the conversion of once lush and fertile land into an area dominated by concrete (Chan, 2012). The rapid pace of land development often results in the paving of land surfaces, impeding the infiltration of rainfall into the soil and increasing the likelihood of flood-related calamities (Bindal et al., 2023;Bohurquez et al., 2023).
The Malaysian government has implemented a variety of flood disaster mitigation measures, but they are still insufficient. This is a result of inadequate flood disaster management exists in this nation and how effective legal frameworks are not integrated into flood management mechanisms (Ridzuan et al., 2022;Elias et al., 2013). Thus, law enforcement must undertake a plan that is anticipated to have a more significant impact (Hussain et al., 2023;Sukairi et al., 2023;Yusoff et al., 2018;Sobian, 2016). Nevertheless, no laws currently in existence have defined procedures for handling flood disasters (Hawa et al., 2023;Sobian, 2016, Saifulsyahira et al., 2016. Previous scholars have not conducted many academic studies on flood disaster management from the perspective of housing development. Aspects of flood management through organised procedures were the focus of previous research. For instance, Munpa et al (2022) studied the relationship between hydrological and climate change components in flood disasters. To strengthen resilience to flood disasters, green building structures were researched by (Junqueira et al., 2021). The inclusion of local plans to regulate the planning processes for development was researched by Norizan et al (2021), while the influence of housing infrastructure as a flood catastrophe resistance measure was researched by (Sen et al., 2021).
Therefore, the underpinning of this paper was to study flood resilience in housing development through land governance from the year 2019 to 2023 by answering the following research question: What are the current trends on flood resilience in housing development through land governance discussed in literature from 2019 to 2023?

Research Methodology
The thematic review was employed in the current study. According to Clarke and Braun (2013), thematic analysis is the process of identifying patterns and constructing themes through extensive reading on the subject. ATLAS.ti 8 was then employed to facilitate the thematic analysis procedure of a literature review, as outlined by (Zairul, 2020).
The literature selection process of the current study was conducted according to three criteria: (i) publication from 2019 to 2023, (ii) consisted of the keyword(s) "flood resilience," "housing development," and "land governance", and (iii) the discussion focused on flood resilience in housing development through land governance in Malaysia. The decision to limit to the three criteria was to help define the trends in the discussion on flood resilience in housing development through land governance, as discussed in literature published from 2019 to 2023. A literature search was conducted in the Science Direct, Emerald Insight, and SCOPUS databases. The search yielded a total of 77 peer-reviewed articles from Science Direct, 52 from Emerald Insight, and 46 from SCOPUS). However, 66 articles were removed due to their lack of relevance to the topic of flood resilience in terms of housing development, as well as instances of duplication and inaccessibility. Next, the remaining 109 articles were uploaded into Mendeley and saved as metadata.
In the current study, a total of 109 metadata were imported to ATLAS.ti 8 as primary documents. The use of ATLAS.ti 8 helped sort the data. Each article was grouped based on six parameters, namely author, issue number, periodical, publisher, volume, and year of publication. This approach allowed for a systematic and organised analysis of the data, enabling the elicitation of meaningful data.
In the first round of coding, 52 codes were generated based on the country and year of publication (refer to Figure 1 and Table 2). The second round of coding was conducted to establish themes that address the research question on the current trends in flood resilience of housing development through land governance, as discussed in the literature from 2019 to 2023.

Analysis and Discussion
This review examined the patterns and trends of the relationship between flood resilience and land governance in housing development. After a comprehensive review of 109 articles, a total of 52 codes emerged. Following several rounds of re-coding and code merging on ATLAS.ti 8, the final trends and patterns produced four main themes. The four themes were aligned with the United Nations Resilience Agendas, namely institutional and governance concerns, disaster management concerns, socio-economic concerns, and environmental concerns.
The network representation of the codes pertaining to the four primary patterns is depicted in Figure 2. A total of 43 codes that encompassed the various concerns related to disaster management were developed. These codes covered institutional and governance concerns with a total of 43 codes, socio-economic concerns were represented by 33 codes, and environmental concerns are encompassed by 19 codes.

Disaster Management Concerns
The concerns related to disaster management have been extensively discussed by previous authors. Most authors have highlighted urban planning management, including aspects of stormwater management, housing infrastructure, engineering solution to tackle flood risks, spatial planning, resilience masterplan, and flood vulnerability (Kiran., 2022;Meng., 2019;Handayani et al., 2019;Szpak Agniecszka et al., 2022;Zhang et al., 2021;Sen et al., 2021). Besides that, Maru et al (2021) discussed the issues and problems of disaster management including the lack of appropriate planning, highlighting the inconsistencies in integrating and conforming principles into policy documents. Moreover, Hassan et al. (2020) found that despite the optimistic visions of plans to address hazards and population growthinduced development pressures, their practical implementation has been hampered by the dominance of residential and manufacturing land uses, haphazard block arrangements, and the municipality's limited ability to implement the proposals.
The shift from a low to a high urbanisation pattern has resulted in increased flood risk (Waghwala and Agnihotri, 2019), demonstrating a failure to manage floodwater within urban areas. Thus, several authors have previously discussed strategies to address the impact of the shift related to climate-disaster resilience. These strategies include the implementation of the Build Back Better concept, the development of climate resilience through nature-based solutions such as the creation of additional urban green spaces for flood protection, the mapping of flood vulnerability, the integration of flood risk assessment and spatial planning for disaster management, the creation of resilience master plans, and the use of flood risk data (Afriyanie et al., 2020;Calliari et al., 2022;Membele et al., 2022;Esmaiel et al., 2022). Other strategies have also been employed including the utilisation of land use scenario simulation to augment spatial decision support with urban managers, which has been identified as a viable strategy by scholars such as Zhao et al. (2023) and Heinzlef et al. (2019).

Environment Concerns
Environmental concerns have emerged as a popular theme for flood resilience in housing development. Bottazzi et al (2019) addressed that land competition, especially in urban areas, increases the risk of flooding. According to Ioanos et al (2019), insufficient management of risk and an overly reactive approach to flood disasters can result in unanticipated alterations to land use and the possibility of conflicts at the local level. It is because of the lack of emphasis on prioritising environmental concerns in urban planning (Meng et al., 2022).
There are also agencies that specialise in climate science, meteorology, environmental science, and hydrology which are at the forefront of flood resilience initiatives due to their considerable expertise in monitoring, weather prediction, and climatic evaluation. These agents bear the primary responsibility for monitoring, analysing, and predicting the impacts of climate change and the resulting incidents of flooding. Thus, it is time for the agencies to improve urban planning by assessing the impacts of climate change on cities and enhancing their adaptive capacity (Woodruff et al., 2021;Leal Filho et al., 2019). In addition, Castaño-Rosa et al (2022) (2021); Wardekker (2021) have also addressed that the assessment for flood risk due to rainfall and the permeable pavement transformation in urban areas as crucial aspects in mitigating flood vulnerability, particularly in coastal cities. Turner (2022) also posits that an improved comprehension of urban land systems is imperative, given the current global scenario where cities are facing environmental transformations.

Institutional and Governance Concerns
The literature on flood resilience studies that pertain to institutional and governance matters is a diverse collection of work that encompasses various fields of study, including policy studies, social science, and political science. Hampton and Curtis (2022) addressed the topic of governance climate adaptation, particularly on the implementation of flood insurance implementation that aims to deliver risk reduction and affordability to cover land-use planning, housing, consumer, and community representatives. Most previous studies also stressed the development of necessary capacity-building activities to improve the spatial plan implementation capacities of local governments such as by transforming governance mechanisms, developing governance approach to peri-urban flooding to acknowledge the social and ecological complexities of climate change, and integrating Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) (Wen et al., 2023;Govindarajulu et al., 2020;Winter and Karvonen, 2022;Asibey et al., 2022;Hewawasam and Matsui, 2020;Van Assche et al., 2022). These will lead to the active participation of stakeholders and foster institutional collaboration to garner further attention from all tiers of government (Maru and Worku., 2022;Singh et al., 2021;Dunning et al., 2020;Ardaya et al., 2019).
According to Oktari et al (2020), knowledge management in disaster practises for mitigating disaster impacts is significant to improve disaster resilience. The reason is that floods have a disproportionately severe effect on informal settlements and low-cost housing. Despite the joint efforts of government stakeholders to manage knowledge of disaster practices, the coordination of flood management is hindered by the distribution of competencies among multiple ministries and their lack of cooperation. This has resulted in a vertically-divided authority, which is characterised by overlapping mandates and competition between state and non-state agencies (Dash et al., 2019;Aguilar et al., 2019;Borbor-Cordova et al., 2020). Nevertheless, Mason (2021); Hewawasam et al (2020) have highlighted the importance of involving stakeholders and communities in the decision-making process to mitigate flood risk, while Lamb et al (2022) have examined the potential of cooperative land ownership as a means of facilitating transformative climate adaptation.
Moreover, the inclination towards network closure is a crucial governance characteristic for the successful implementation of resilience measures (Oktari et al., 2020). This information might assist urban policymakers and planners in comprehending the reasons behind the formation of networks, thereby enabling the effective implementation of bluegreen infrastructure in this region that is experiencing rapid growth and the impacts of climate change, as well as in other areas. Therefore, the utilisation of a network paradigm offers valuable perspectives for establishing comprehensive resilience strategies that facilitate adaptation and transformation within metropolitan systems.

Socio-Economic Concerns
The final theme is socio-economic concerns. The amalgamation of social and economic perspectives is evident due to their interdependent adverse effects of floods. For instance, limited access to secure shelter is an issue of inequity that affects the financially disadvantaged, thereby highlighting the intersectionality of the problem. Previous studies have highlighted community vulnerability and its adaptation to tackle flood disasters. For example, Nurdini et al (2021) examined the housing preferences of individuals residing in flood-prone regions with a focus on enhancing community resilience. She employed three key indicators, namely survival capacity, perception of the housing redevelopment process, and the capacity to contribute to the housing products in order to analyse the housing choices of the participants. Meanwhile, Chongwilalkasaem and Chalermyanont (2022) conducted a study on the cost-benefit analysis of flood risk avoidance or reduction as a strategy for the housing market. This could be due that enhancing citizens' capacity for autonomous actions, such as fortifying their ability to act, can be more efficiently achieved by furnishing them with comprehensive action plans and detailed scripts in the context of flood risk (Ro and Garfin, 2023).
Moreover, the integration of climate change adaptation and quality of life can potentially augment flood resilience (Friedman et al., 2023). Several scholars have examined the challenges and difficulties faced by communities that are susceptible to flood disasters. Factors such as limited education, skills, awareness, and sense of urgency regarding climate risks, inadequate community involvement, low adaptive capacity, and significant financial constraints have been identified (Borbor-Cordova et al., 2020;Marschutz et al., 2020;Hewawasam et al., 2020;Ehsan et al., 2022;Mason et al., 2021;Okunola and Olawuni, 2022). Previous scholars also agree that both community and individual actions are crucial for improving flood resilience, rather than dependency on government intervention, such as relocation to alternative regions (Yamashita, 2022). According to the study, most residents residing in the western coastal regions of Peninsular Malaysia possessed the ability to relocate to regions that share similar characteristics with their initial place of abode. Furthermore, their choice to migrate to one of these areas is not contingent upon their evaluation of the area's resilience. In addition, Hampton (2022) emphasises the influence of flood risk on real estate values. Therefore, it can be argued that community-based leadership, knowledge, and skills play a vital part in improving the flood resilience of housing development.

Conclusion
This paper provides a review of the current trends and patterns in flood resilience pertaining to housing development, with a focus on land governance spanning from 2019 to April 2023. The results obtained through code-to-document analysis using ATLAS.ti 8 revealed that prior research has emphasised on disaster management, socio-economic, institutional and governance, and environmental concerns as having significant patterns and trends. Based on the aforementioned findings, it is evident that past authors have placed significant emphasis on the topics of disaster management and environmental concerns. The topic of disaster management, particularly in relation to urban planning and flood disaster issues, has received significant attention and discussion in academic circles. To address these challenges, the matter of environmental concerns was indirectly deliberated upon with the aim of enhancing climate adaptation capacity through the integration of data by forefront agencies. Therefore, it aligns with the prevailing challenges faced by global community, characterized by the increasing frequency of floods, even in areas previously unaffected by such occurrences. Notwithstanding the results of the present research, there remains a gap in the studies of flood resilience, particularly in the context of institutional and governance concerns especially in decision-making related to housing development or land governance policies, aimed at addressing these issues. Therefore, advancing studies on flood resilience necessitates the implementation of comprehensive mitigation and adaptation strategies, particularly in the context of housing development approval procedures. Hence, it is a prudent step to delve into decision-making approach pertaining to flood disasters, given its critically and extensive discourse in the context of climate change adaptation.