2017•01•24     Kuala Lumpur

In August 2016, the National Science Council (NSC) chaired by the Malaysian Prime Minister, made a decision to set up a Scientific Expert Panel (SEP) to advise and assist the newly formed National Disaster Management Agency (NADMA) on strengthening disaster risk management in Malaysia. A parallel role of the SEP would be to advise Malaysia on the National Action Plan on Disaster Risk Reduction (MyDRR).

Prof. Jamal Hisham Hashim, a Research Fellow at UNU-IIGH, has recently been appointed to the SEP by the Office of the Science Advisor to the Prime Minister and NADMA, on a two-year term from 2017 to 2018. This is mainly due to Prof Jamal’s ongoing works in the field of disaster risk management. Prof Jamal has participated and presented at a number of UNISDR conferences on the Sendai Framework and disaster risk reduction. He will be part of the United Nations University’s delegation to UNISDR’s 2017 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Cancun, Mexico in May 2017. Prof. Jamal has also conducted research and published on climate change and disaster risk, especially related to the major floods in Malaysia in 2014. In July 2016, UNU-IIGH launched a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health which was co-edited by Prof Jamal and Dr Jose Siri, another Research Fellow at UNU-IIGH. The special issue focused on disasters in the form extreme weather events as consequences of climate change.

Click here for news article regarding the Scientific Expert Panel (SEP) set up.