In recent years, Malaysia has experienced a number of landslide disasters resulting from extreme tropical rainfall. Landslides have occurred in several parts of Malaysia, such as Paya Terubong (Penang), Highland Towers (Kuala Lumpur), Hulu Langat and Pos Dipang (Perak). These landslides cost millions of pounds of property loss and hundreds of lives. On 21 October 2017, 11 workers were killed in a landslide at a construction site on Malaysia's Penang Island. The October 2002 landslide in Kuala Lumpur which completely destroyed several houses and killed six members of a family and the 2011 Hulu Langat landslide, where 15 children and a caretaker in an orphanage were killed are still in the public's memory. Population increase and subsequent urbanization have demanded the development of new residential and areas and roads in mountainous areas where there is an increased risk of slope failures. Malaysia's population is projected to rise to 41.5 million by 2040, up from 28.6 million in 2010. This proposal will produce a qualitative hazard map delineating areas prone to landslides in the Langat River Basin, Peninsular Malaysia. The hazard map will identify landslide-prone areas, including expected changes in landslide susceptibility as a result of climate change. Langat River Basin is most urbanized river basin in Malaysia. Important conurbations include towns such as Cheras, Kajang, Bangi and Putrajaya (the administrative capital of Malaysia). The basin has an area of about 2350 km2. The area has been experiencing numerous landslides disasters and has been identified by the Malaysia Public Work Department in its National Slope Master Plan Study as landslide-prone area. The proposal will involve close collaboration with the Public Works Department and the National Disaster Management Agency in Malaysia and several industrial partners to ensure the adaptation of the proposed map in practice.

The seminal 2012 publication of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study highlighted the relevance of ambient particular matter pollution for adverse effects on public health, ranking within the top ten of non-communicable diseases (NCD) in both developed and developing countries. While much emphasis has been placed on research to better understand and identify strategies to reduce air pollution from key anthropogenic emission sources (e.g. road transport, shipping, household biomass burning), forest fires (also referred to as wildfires or bushfires in different parts of the world) did not get as much attention. Despite the occurrence of wildfires without any human influence, a recent paper researching the loss of life expectancy from air pollution compared to other risk factors at a global scale indicates that only 10% of all wildfire emissions can be classed as 'natural'. Other studies illustrate the complexity and trends in wildfires particularly in South and South East Asian countries. At the same time, most research into modelling effects of transboundary air pollution on public health has to date focused on the Northern Hemisphere, with very little data available to underpin robust assessments of the contribution of fire events on air quality in the wider Asia-Pacific Region (APR). Evaluating the contribution of Fire Emissions to Transboundary Air Pollution and public health risks in the Asia-Pacific region (EFETAP) brings together researchers from the UK, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia to address the critical questions related to the contributions to transboundary air pollution from wildfires and other biomass burning in the region. To achieve this, EFETAP will improve the representation of fire emissions and their contribution in a globally applied and widely used state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry transport model to determine the scale of the contribution of fire emissions to air pollution episodes in the APR. Secondly, building on a better understanding of the origin and composition of fine particulate matter concentrations in the APR, health researchers will explore the utility of better integrating environmental and health datasets to identify key drivers and potential intervention points for strategies to reduce public health impacts. Finally, EFETAP aims to trial the development of a framework for short-term forecasting of PM2.5 pollution episodes in the APR, providing better insight into the composition and origin of the pollutants driving severe haze events. In order to achieve these objectives, EFETAP brings together an international, interdisciplinary team comprising five academic institutions and two research institutes from 4 countries (UK, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia). This new partnership combines existing bilateral collaborations into a strong, integrated team with complementary expertise and ample experience in working across discipline and country boundaries. The strength of this partnership lies as well in the relationships of all partners to the wider research landscape, including close ties with national and international funding agencies and science foundations, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (with its Air Convention, which has laid the foundations for transboundary air pollution assessment globally), the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme. The PI, Co-I and project partners are well established and networked, bringing considerable added value and in-kind contributions through staff time and expertise, which will further add to the leveraging power of this new partnership. The project will convene two workshops, one in Australia and one in the UK to engage the wider academic community, research funding agencies and policy makers to ensure that the findings are accessible and taken up by the research community, and informs future international, interdisciplinary funding calls.