Tsunami risk assessment: How safe is Malaysia?

The effectiveness of vegetation as coastal protection was evidenced during the Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004. Sufficiency of mangrove forest as natural protection against tsunami along Malaysia's coastline is thus of a great concern. This paper presents the assessment of the overall trend of tsunami occurrence and highlight the level of tsunami exposure for Malaysia. This paper also describes the current status of mangrove forest along west coast of Malaysia in reducing the wave impact. Analysis of global tsunami and earthquake data shows that Malaysia is potentially vulnerable to future tsunami impact. Malaysia had a varying width of mangrove forest distribution which is hoped to protect the coastal area. However, with the increasing trend of threat and decreasing mangrove belt, Malaysia is potentially exposed to such severe wave impacts. Implementation of optimum replanting scheme is inevitable to ensure acceptable level of protection along the coastline of Malaysia.