My name is Norpadzlihatun, and my peers call me ‘Atun’.
I am a construction lecturer at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). I joined this university in 2007 while pursuing my Master’s degree in Engineering Management and after resigning as a Contracts and Commercial engineer at Malaysian Maritime and Dredging Corporation (MMDC). I worked with MMDC for four years to gather professional experience as a civil engineer. Serving under the same umbrella, I collected experience working with Dr Nik & Associates (DNA) and Tidalmarine Engineering (TME).
Back in 2010, I was awarded a scholarship by the government of Malaysia for a place in Malaysia-Imperial Doctorate Programme (MIDP), a split PhD program between Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and Imperial College London (IC), and I graduated with a PhD in Environmental Research from Imperial College London in 2013. I have also been awarded a scholarship to pursue postdoctoral research at the centre from January 2019 till January 2021.
One of the reasons I left my previous job in the dredging industry was I felt that the knowledge I had was insufficient, and this had crippled my ability to do more. I always wanted to know more about the system this industry has been running on. The question of ‘Why’ I do what I do has always lingered. However, the more I searched for the gap, the more I could not put my finger on it. I realised then that I needed to look at things from a much broader perspective that demands deeper knowledge, resulting in my pursuit of higher academic degrees.
After graduating with a Master’s degree in Engineering Management, I was inspired by the inadequate environmental preservation while dredging in Malaysia. In addition, I realised that the environment should drive the dredging industry in Malaysia as Malaysia pledged to achieve the status of a fully developed country. The pledge has created waves of worry about whether we can preserve nature’s beauty and guarantee our children’s good health. This fact motivates me to keep pursuing research on my Ph.D.
My subject is dredging, an excavation process to extract sediments from underwater for multiple uses, including navigational benefits. As dredging deals with sediments, known as the sink of contaminants, this process is a subject that needs to be worried about its environmental impacts, particularly in contaminated areas. Much research acknowledges that dredging triggered negative ecological impacts. This includes mortality of biological resources, increase in predation pressure, change in morphology and sediment chemistry, reduction in quality of food for benthos, increase in toxic contaminants exposure, and increase in benthic/pelagic nutrient flux rates.
Much can be learned from other countries; their knowledge and wisdom have already surpassed the monetary prominence. Their efforts towards environmental preservation made me realise that it is time for us Malaysians to be responsible for the environment while achieving the status of the nation that we are pursuing. As I have already been allowed to research my subject, it is time for me to do my bits. Knowing this, I joined the Centre for Environmental Policy (CEP), IC.
In the West, for example, in the US, sediment quality analysis is commonly used to determine the contamination level of a dredging area. However, many from the dredging industry in the US rejected this analysis to become a standard. The rejection was based on the fact that scientific evidence needs to be revised, which could lead to disproportionate costs for sediment remediation. In a much different story on the east side, for example, Malaysia and India, the requirement to dredge in these countries is considered high due to the increase in waterborne transportation and the fisheries industry. However, dredging cost is the primary issue, even for countries with high Gross Domestic Products and the much smaller ones. Thus, in these countries, there is a concern that the environment will be traded off due to the high costs of dredging.
The question I am trying to address in my continuous teaching and learning is: how do we balance the aspects of economics, the environment, and the management of dredging? I am using dredging in Malaysia as my case study. Interview sessions with 11 experts from representatives of the port administrator, a manufacturing company, dredging contractors, and the public were performed during my Master’s study. This is to validate whether the issues exist, as I presumed, in the dredging industry in Malaysia. The results turned out to be positive, and the drivers of dredging issues in Malaysia have been identified: the economy, the management of dredging, and the environment.
I have re-validated this through a questionnaire that I sent to experts at the start of my PhD, and many of them responded, including marine ecologists, registered chemists, professional and chartered engineers, environmental consultants, university professors, and environmental analysts. This confirmed that the ecological requirement before permitting dredging works must be revised in Malaysia, and efficient dredging ecological management tools were required.
From these findings, developing a sustainable decision-making method that considers the environment, management of dredging, and economic aspects is beneficial. Moreover, integrating multiple environmental management tools has already received much positive feedback. Thus, a risk-based approach of integrated environmental management for dredging is an appropriate tool that will provide holistic analysis for making decisions in managing dredging. In addition, the tools mustn’t overburden dredging stakeholders, for example, through disproportionate costs allocated for sediment remediation. Even though my research involves dredging in Malaysia, global dredging stakeholders seek a sustainable decision-making method. Thus, the integration of tools I applied must be able to be used by many.
Along with teaching and consulting, I aim to focus on fundamental research, including determining contaminant types and their sources in dredging areas and mapping them using Geographic Information System (GIS), hopefully in collaboration with world and local dredging experts. In addition, I aim to focus on the behavioural study of construction material made from remediated dredged sediments so that construction costs can be lessened and a sustainable solution for the dredging industry in disposing of their dredged sediments can be applied.joined
