Publication Details

A pixel-based integrated multi-hazard coastal vulnerability framework for the Eastern and Southern Coasts of Peninsular Malaysia

oastal zones worldwide are increasingly recognized as frontline regions where climate change, sea-level rise, and intensive human use converge, amplifying risks to communities, ecosystems, and critical infrastructure. Within this context, robust, spatially explicit vulnerability assessments are essential to inform evidence-based coastal management, adaptation planning, and disaster risk reduction. Peninsular Malaysia has an extensive and densely populated coastline that underpins national fisheries, trade, tourism, and urban development, yet remains highly exposed to monsoon-driven marine and fluvial processes. Its eastern and southern coastal regions, facing the South China Sea and the Singapore Strait, are particularly sensitive to seasonal wave climate, storm surges, river discharge, and rapid land-use change, creating complex spatial patterns of risk to coastal communities and infrastructure. Against this backdrop, coastal zones along the eastern and southern shores of Peninsular Malaysia are subjected to multiple interacting hazards, while many existing assessments still emphasize single-hazard perspectives or coarse administrative units. This study develops a pixel-based Multi-Hazard Coastal Vulnerability Index (MHCVI) for a 10 km inland coastal belt covering Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, and Johor by integrating three hazard layers, riverine flood inundation, coastal inundation, and coastal erosion, with six vulnerability and exposure layers: slope, land use and land cover, population density, road density, building footprint density, and geology/lithology. The analysis relies entirely on open geospatial datasets within a GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis framework, and criterion weights are derived using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to reflect expert judgement and coastal vulnerability principles. The results reveal pronounced spatial heterogeneity in both hazard and vulnerability across the eastern and southern coastal regions. Riverine flooding emerges as the most influential hazard, with Pahang recording the highest share of very high flood susceptibility and Johor exhibiting the largest proportion of no-hazard areas. The vulnerability component is dominated by high vulnerability classes at the regional scale, with the strongest concentrations in Kelantan and Pahang, where densely settled low-lying corridors coincide with susceptible terrain. The final MHCVI output highlights extensive hotspots of high and very high multi-hazard risk in these states, while also delineating substantial stretches of lower-risk coastline. Conclusively, the study demonstrates that coastal risk in eastern and southern Peninsular Malaysia is governed by the spatial convergence of multiple hazards with persistent physical susceptibility and localized human exposure, and it provides a transparent, reproducible framework to support coastal risk screening, spatial planning, and climate adaptation in monsoon-affected coastal environments.