Estimating Flood Losses in Oil Palm Plantation Using Flood Modeling

Abstract

Flooding is an annual event in Malaysia that causes damage of properties and loss of life. There are still lack of information available to explain the impact of flooding in the agricultural sector. Thus, this paper focuses on flooding and its impact on oil palm plantations. A flood model is developed by using InfoWorks ICM to determine the impact of floods before and after mitigation measure. Flood mapping and Geographical Information System (GIS) technology are integrated to determine the flood losses on agricultural land along the Selangor River, specifically in oil palm plantations. The results show that the estimated total damage losses for two flood events; 10 year average recurrence intervals (ARI) and 100 year ARI, involved millions of ringgits. A retention pond is proposed, modeled and tested as a flood mitigation option. The mitigation measure reduced the flood inundation in the agricultural area significantly by 64.89% for 10 year ARI and 72.09% for 100 year ARI. Besides, the losses in oil palm plantation are also reduced significantly by 64.52% for 10 year ARI and 72% for 100 year ARI.