Flood vulnerability and risk assessment of urban traditional buildings in a heritage district of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Flood hazard is increasing in frequency and magnitude in major South East Asian metropolitan areas due to fast urban development and changes in climate, threatening people's property and life. Typically, flood management actions are mostly focused on large-scale defences, such as river embankments or discharge channels or tunnels. However, these are difficult to implement in town centres without affecting the value of their heritage districts and might not provide sufficient mitigation. Therefore, urban heritage buildings may become vulnerable to flood events, even when they were originally designed and built with intrinsic resilient measures, based on the local knowledge of the natural environment and its threats at the time. The study provides evidence that results obtained for a small district can be scaled up to the city level, to inform both generic and specific protection strategies.