Research Plan or Research Status Sheet

研究計画又は研究状況シート

For the research plan of your intended graduate school, create a "Research Plan or Research
Status Sheet" either in Japanese or English. （進学先研究科での研究計画について、日本語又は
英語で本「研究計画又は研究状況シート」に作成すること。）（図表を入れた場合も、Ａ4で2～3枚程度と
する。）

Nationality(国籍) Malaysian Name(氏名) WONG YONG JIE

Theme(テーマ) Integrated River Watershed Management
 Water is one of the basic needs for all living organisms on earth as none of them can
survive without water. Thus, it is of utmost importance to maintain this valued resource so
that it can be utilized in a more sustainable way. However, due to the increased human
population and anthropogenic activities, which have resulted pressure on both quantity
and quality of water resources. As a result, nowadays not only lack of water availability
but water quality degradation is also a big challenge across the world. It has been
recognized that water pollution constitutes a much broader threat than expected and
continues to pose serious health risks to the public as well as aquatic life. In terms of
water quality, Biswas et al. (1997) highlighted that in many countries water quality
considerations are receiving an increasing attention because of their adverse impacts on
the health of people as well as on ecosystems. For possible identification and mitigation
of point and non-point contaminant sources that result from these anthropogenic impacts,
geographically referencing water quality data and relating these data to other
information, such as demography and land use information are highly important.
Therefore, to maintain and improve water quality, an adequate understanding of water
quality management is required.
Water quality assessment with aid of Geographical Information System (GIS) and
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the monitoring, analyzing and prediction processes is a recent
technology driven development. These are powerful tools for establishing relationships
between impacts due to natural as well as human activities and its effect on water quality.
One of the important elements of water quality management is monitoring the quality
of water resources. This monitoring is undertaken by collecting relevant information on
the physical, chemical and biological categories of water quality and as the advancement
of the technology, distribution and fate of heavy metal aspects and micro or even nano-
sized materials are becoming more important to be monitored. Each category has a
number of parameters and the collected information obtained from these categories of
water quality is then used to perform a complete assessment in evaluating quality of
water bodies. This assessment provides basic data for detecting trends, for providing
water quality information to water authorities, and for making necessary decisions and/or
recommendations for future actions.
However, monitoring all water quality parameters with different sources of pollution
(e.g., those entering a river basin) is a difficult task since it is laborious and expensive.
Due to insufficient funding, particularly in developing countries, is one of the most
common barriers to conduct regular monitoring programs. Considering the above facts,
the water authorities should establish priorities for resource allocation and develop
monitoring programs effectively for future development of sustainable water quality
management. Therefore, by utilizing both GIS coupled with AI in water quality
management in Malaysia, a developing country in the Southeast Asia region, it will be
able to contribute to the water management in the nation.
 The proposed research area will be the Selangor River Basin, which is situated in
Selangor, the most rapidly developing and densely populated with 5.79 million in 2013.
Selangor River emerges from the foothills of Fraser's hill and traverses the northeast
region of Selangor for some 110 km, or about 200 km from Fraser's summit, until it
reaches the coast as shown in Figure 1. The basin is approximately 70 km long and 30 km
wide and has an area of 2,200 km2, or about 28% of the Selangor state.
During the 1960s and 1970s the Malaysian
economy was mainly based on agricultural
activities. But from the 1980s onwards, there
has been a major economic transformation
focused on the manufacturing sector since the
government has been aiming towards
industrialization. During the period between
1981 and 1995, the land used for agriculture
in the state of Selangor has increased from
46% to 49% due to an increase in oil palm plantations. The industrialization policy has
brought about urbanization, commercial and infrastructure developments in the state.
This is reflected in an increase in urban land usage from 5% in 1981 to 8% in 1995. The
increase in land used for both urban and agricultural sector has brought about the
clearing of natural and wetland forests. Rapid changes in land use are recognized as
bringing severe environmental degradation in various environmental compartments such
as the forest, wetland and aquatic ecosystems. Most human activities in the basin affect
water quality, directly through discharge of sewage and other wastewater or indirectly
through land use changes.
National Water Quality Standards for Malaysia, an official guideline for river water
quality as well as effluent discharged was established by Department of Environment
Malaysia. It has set clear objectives and standards. As stated in the guideline, the
objective is to ensure provision of potable water and safe treatment and disposal of
wastewater as per established standards. Nevertheless, the following are problems
observed:
(a) Water quality in Selangor River is deteriorating from year to year. Even though
laws are enforced and standards are provided for the discharge of the effluent,
due to no strict monitoring, factories may not be following the standard.
(b) No continuous monitoring for the water quality data. River water quality data are
only available for every twice per month due to the budget restriction.
Thus, to overcome the above mentioned problem, the final goal of the research is to
exploratory analyze existing water quality data of Selangor river water quality with the
applications of GIS and AI to generate information that can be used for water quality
management. The specific objectives of the study are to:
 (1) Analyze and evaluate spatial and temporal trend of seasonal water quality;
(2) Determine the effect of activities in the land with respect to major pollution
indicator variables to identify possible causes of deterioration or improvement of the
water quality; and
(3) Evaluate water quality conditions of the water resources and distributions in relation
to recommended water quality standard.
Discussion with the Malaysian officers will be important as to understand what are the
current planning and also future planning/direction of river planning and management so
that integration from both parties in achieving improvement of water quality can be done.
List of water quality parameters that are currently measured by the Malaysia government
is important to know so that a suitable planning and work can be done. Next, it is
important to observe the landuse around the area and the historical trend of parameters,
i.e., higher or lower concentration of BOD over years and also its distribution from
upstream to downstream.
Last but not least, modelling by using GIS and AI will be taken place. In order to
evaluate the effect and impact of landuse; hydrology, lithology as well as soil type data
will be combined to predict the future water quality parameter concentration as well as its
distribution. Besides that, relationship among these parameters can be studied by using
the AI so that certain parameter can be omitted to be measured in order to save the
operation cost. Understanding that laboratory cost is one of the biggest challenge for
Malaysia, by using this two tools we will be definitely able to ease the government burden
and able to provide the real time results for the environmental monitoring.
In conclusion, river water management in both water quantity and water quality is
always important especially for the developing countries like Malaysia as a balance is
required to maintain between the development and also the environment. Else, it will take
a much longer time and cost to restore the environment to its beauty. Integration
between different parties from academic researcher and policy makers in archiving a
common goal will be definitely the best option in managing a river.