The most devastating flood event in Kota Bharu was recorded in December 2014, which affected several properties worth millions of dollars and thousands of homes. Damage to physical properties, especially buildings, is identified as a significant contributor to flood disasters in Malaysia. Therefore, it is essential to address physical flood vulnerability by developing an integrated approach for modeling buildings’ flood vulnerability to decrease the flood consequences. This study aims at developing a flood vulnerability assessment approach using an indicator-based model (IBM) for individual buildings in Kota Bahru, Kelantan, Malaysia. An intensive literature review and expert opinions were used to determine suitable indicators that contribute to the physical flood vulnerability of buildings. The indicators were grouped into three components, i.e., flood hazard intensity (I), building characteristics (C), and effect of the surrounding environment (E). The indicators were further refined based on expert opinions and Relative Importance Index (RII) analysis. Based on their contribution to the Malaysia local building flood vulnerability, priority weight is assigned by the experts to each of the selected indicators using the participatory Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). A spatial database of buildings in Kota Bharu is developed through field surveys and manually digitizing building footprints from satellite imageries. The identified indicators and their weight are added to each building footprint. The Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) aggregation method combined the weight of indicators into a vulnerability index and maps. The results of a physical flood vulnerability were validated using building damage information obtained through interviews with the community that experienced previous flood in the study area. The result showed that about 98% of the study area’s buildings have either moderate or low vulnerability to flooding. The flood vulnerability map has an overall accuracy of 75.12% and 0.63 kappa statistics. In conclusion, the IBM approach has been used successfully to develop a physical flood vulnerability for buildings in Kota Bharu. The model contributes to support different structural and non-structural approaches in the flood mitigations process.

The construction industry remains an important economic sector that supports the growth of a nation. It is vital to maintain the industry’s momentum when facing the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, or similar in the future, to ensure employability and decent jobs for every individual in the industry, especially foreign labourers who are always regarded as vulnerable. Improving existing project communications management practices is essential to suppressing infection among labourers; however, there are only a few efforts made to understand the current condition. This study explores the communications management barriers and the potential improvement measures amid the COVID-19 outbreak sweeping across the Malaysian construction industry. The findings disclose that out of eleven communication channels, only six communications management barrier variables with eight items, and three communications management improvement measure variables with seven items, are classified as highly critical, based on a systematic literature review (SLR), and a questionnaire survey on 100 foreign labourers and management team members, respectively, where the data gathered were analysed using the Rasch measurement model. The finding also suggests that site review meetings, team meeting discussions and project reports require immediate attention to ensure the construction industry remains robust without significant interruption during the course of the pandemic.

The property sector is revitalised to incorporate sustainability, specifically the biophilic design, to encourage human interaction with nature. Thus, there is an urgent need to communicate the biophilic design elements amongst stakeholders, especially the foreign workers, to ensure the project meets the requirement. However, standard project communications management is no longer practical, as the construction industry worldwide has been severely impacted by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Hence, this paper evaluates the biophilic design elements to be communicated and examines the project communications management breakdown relating to the biophilic design elements in the Malaysian construction industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), focus group discussion (FGD) and questionnaire survey on 147 foreign workers, this paper found that from 33 biophilic design element items, only 1 item is categorised as highly critical, whereas another 20 items are categorised as critical. In addition, 43 potential communications management breakdown items from a total of 66 items fall under the critical category. The finding suggests that communication breakdown is caused by the language barrier amongst foreign workers from different ethnicities as well as between foreign workers and the supervisors, since face to face communication is limited during the pandemic.

Architectural projects are initiated with the designing phase, that tends to translate and materialize the client’s requirements and needs. This phase is highly and directly affected by the exchanged information and communication between architects with their clients. Nevertheless, despite of its importance, studies have proven that communication management, being a significant field of project management, is distinctly overlooked by architects in the architectural industry. Thus, this paper highlights the current practices and attributes of communication management in the context of architectural design phase. It outlines the different aspects’ definitions of communication, as well as communication management standards and practices. By the end of this paper, the findings are expected to increase the communication management knowledge amongst architects to achieve success in projects by promoting the relationships between them and their clients. Finally, this paper uncover the architects’ need for significant improvement of communication management as an insistent matter to ultimately fulfill project success.

As the frequency of disaster occurrence increases, the world cities today are getting more difficult in terms of the management of the event. One of the most discussed issues today is the management of the post-disaster recovery that involves several stages such as the planning, management of multiple stakeholders, restoration, reconstruction and delivery. It is important to note that input from related stakeholders is necessary to make the right decision during this most critical period. In the process of building back after a disaster, it is important to ensure the newly constructed infrastructures are built to be more resilient and able to withstand a certain level of disaster recurrence. Elements of disaster risk reduction should be incorporated in the planning, redesign, construction and the operation of the built environment. In Malaysia, the disaster management has been the responsibility of the Disaster Management and Relief Committee that consists of agencies at the central, state and local levels. This is to ensure that all aspects are being considered and to be more effective in managing the situation.

Lack of infrastructure capacity to the demand in mobility results in delays in traffic. U-turns restrict the movement of the opposing through-traffic during the maneuver, hence triggering delays. Significant delays can be observed, especially in high volume traffic, where U-turning is not restricted. Hence, it is imperative to study the delays incurred by the U-turning vehicles to assess their impacts on traffic congestion. This study thus proposes a quantitative method to estimate the aggregate and average delay per vehicle caused by U-turns at uncontrolled medians of urban roads. Traffic data were collected at a corridor where vehicles were allowed to U-turn on a four-lane divided mixed traffic urban road in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The delay in the opposing lane of traffic was calculated by analyzing the data using a novel analytical method; a derivative of the Webster’s delay model. The results reveal that the suggested technique evaluates the caused delay with good accuracy. Excessive traffic delay and about three seconds delay per vehicle in the through-traffic of the opposite lane align well with the experienced delay at the site. The method can be used to assess the delay at straight corridor sections where U-turns are not restricted, understand the causes of the delay, and develop control measures for improved traffic performance.