Flood Disaster Water Supply: A Review of Issues and Challenges in Malaysia

Abstract

Potable water is essential for the survival of flood victims in flood evacuation centers. This paper review water supply issues during flood events. Several water supply issues experienced by flood victims were identified such as contaminated water resource, scarcity of safe drinking water, flood-related disease outbreak and disruption of water treatment facilities. This paper also discusses on the challenges to overcome the water supply problems during flood such as lack of access to potable water, unable to treat water properly, accessibility of potable water, speedy restoration process of water supply and accessibility of health services. Hence, the management of water supply during the flood should be done efficiently and systematically to ensure sufficient and safe water supply for flood victims. In this effort, roles and cooperation's of various agencies are very important in ensuring the affected flood victims obtain clean and continuous water supply despite flooding. Introduction Water is vital for all living things. In the context of science, water can exist in three phases; solid, liquid and gas. Clean water plays an important role to humans for drinking, washing and cooking. About 71 percent of earth surface is covered by water or ice (De Blij, Muller, & Williams, 2004). Before water can be used for daily activities, it was treated and then distributed by the water supply agencies and known as treated water. Each state has their own water supply agency to manage the water resources to ensure it is safe for the consumers. Oftenly, the consumers face problems with water supply during floods events, especially in terms of quality and quantity. This paper provides a brief overview on issues of potable water during flood events. This paper also discusses on the challenges to solve the issues in the form of review the literature from different sources, previous studies of other researchers, books, handbooks and journals related to water supply during flood events.