Shah Alam To Get SMART Tunnel To Help Mitigate Future Floods

Shah Alam to get SMART Tunnel to help mitigate floods.

Last year's big Klang Valley flood, particularly in high-density areas like Shah Alam, has got the government looking into new ways to prevent it from recurring.

The most recent idea by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob and the National Disaster Management Committee is to build a SMART tunnel system in Shah Alam, just like the one at Sungai Besi, as a solution to mitigate floods in the area.

The Prime Minister who chaired the meeting said it is one of the proposed short and long-term measures submitted to solve the flood problem.

On top of the SMART Tunnel system, the Environment and Water Ministry also suggested deepening and widening main rivers to build more barriers and barrages to contain stormwaters. 

"There are also plans to develop settlement areas that are resilient like sponge cities in China. All these proposals are comprehensive solutions to the flood problem, and they involve not only allocations by the billions of ringgit but also a long time before they can materialise. Therefore the meeting agrees for the government to focus on high-risk areas and that priority be given to implementing these plans," the Prime Minister said in a statement.

Not forgetting villages along the river, Sabri said they would also look into relocating them to higher ground as they would be safer there.

Other measures proposed were also to upgrade flood forecast and warning systems. "The government will also construct a flood prediction and warning system based on artificial intelligence (AI) and would upgrade 100 weather observation stations," he said.

The Stormwater Management And Road Tunnel (SMART Tunnel) in Sungai Besi was constructed in 2003 after its initial proposal in 2001. The 9.7-kilometre-long tunnel which opened in 2007 is the longest drainage/road system in Southeast Asia and the second-longest in Asia.

In 2011, Malaysia's SMART Tunnel received the United Nation's Habitat Scroll of Honour Award for its innovation in managing peak hour traffic and stormwater.