PUTRAJAYA, Nov 25 — More than 150 researchers and students have gathered here for the Asean University Network/Southeast Asia Engineering Education Development Network (AUN/SEED-Net) Regional Conference on Natural Disaster (RCND).

Themed "Disaster Management for Resilience and Sustainability”, the two-day conference is jointly organised by Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), AUN/SEED-Net and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Deputy Dean of MJIIT (research and innovation) Associate Prof Dr Shahrum Shah Abdullah said Malaysia was often affected by natural disasters such as floods, landslides, haze, earthquakes, as well as rare cases of droughts and tsunami.

Annually, floods accounted for the most frequent and significant damage and were also responsible for the huge number of loss of human lives, disease epidemics, property and crop damage, he said.

"This conference is an important platform between researchers and students to exchange ideas and build network towards sustainable research collaboration in the disaster field,” he said at the opening ceremony of the conference here today.

The conference covers a wide scope of topics including disaster resilience community, disaster prevention and mitigation, early warning system and Internet of Things in disaster management. — Bernama