KUALA LUMPUR: The National Flood Forecasting and Warning Programme (PRAB) was found to be unsatisfactory in terms of issuing flood warnings and announcements, according to the Auditor General’s Report (LKAN) 2022.
According to the report, the output of the service objectives of the programme was unsatisfactory in terms of issuing announcements and flood warnings two days in advance and in increasing the accuracy of flood warnings and actual events to less than 0.5 metres.
“PRAB’s management of the construction of the hydrology telemetry stations, remote terminal unit (RTU) data, development of the Integrated Forecasting Operation System (iFOS), accuracy of flood forecasts and warnings, ICT security environment management, and maintenance management were also found to be unsatisfactory.
“However, generally PRAB assists the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (JPS) in making flood forecasts and announcements and in terms of output achievement for infrastructure construction, PRAB’s performance was satisfactory,“ according to the report.
In order to address the weaknesses that were raised and to ensure the same issues do not recur in the future, the audit recommended that JPS develop performance indicators to assess the success of PRAB so that the objectives in forecasting and notifying could be achieved, thus minimising the impact of floods on the population.
“In addition, it is also recommended that the hydrology telemetry stations, sirens or web cameras be monitored and to carry out maintenance according to plan to ensure that the stations and equipment are working properly.
“JPS should determine the best method to ensure the stable delivery of data from the hydrology telemetry stations to the gateway after the closure of the 3G network to ensure PRAB’s objectives are achieved,“ according to the report.
It was also recommended that the management and data cleaning process from RTU to the Forecast Data Centre be monitored to ensure no errors in the output resulting from the ETL process. –Bernama
