Urban Flood Reconstruction Using Bloggers’ ...

This paper was an attempt to suggest that bloggers’ information, after being judged rationally, would be a huge contribution as part of the compilation of flood information system. Immediately after a flood event in January 2009, bloggers in Kuching, Sarawak had posted their “personal diaries” on the internet along with a collection of photos. They may write leisurely, but unaware, they had provided valuable information on the flood event. As demonstrated, flood depths in roads adjacent to Sarawak River were identified spatially by referring to three blog sites carefully selected to be the figures of merit. With the availability of such data at eleven locations, a 1-D river model was set up to have a flood mapping extended to include other parts of the city centre with relative ease. The bloggers’ information is argued here as a source of data potential to improve the flood data collection and management.