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The purpose of this paper is to look into how collaborations among science and technology groups and other stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region can facilitate implementation of national and local disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies through education, training and field practice. Case studies on transdisciplinary approach (TDA) that integrates cross-cutting DRR issues and various stakeholders through science and technology are introduced from several countries in the region as attempts to holistically support societies build and strengthen their disaster resilience.

First, through literature review, the transition from single discipline to TDA is illustrated in which various stakeholders of different disciplines work together to achieve a common societal goal. This is followed by introduction of several case studies of actual TDA implementation for DRR in which information had been gathered through surveys and interviews with international science and technology stakeholders. Finally, through analysis and discussion, the study identifies the key roles of science and technology stakeholders for facilitating TDA for DRR.

The study concludes with key findings on the specific roles of science and technology including provision of education and training to build capacities of DRR practitioners to effectively plan and implement DRR measures, support to evidence-based decision making through locally specific scientific assessments and analysis and validation scientific information on the actual field for DRR practitioners and agencies. In materializing these roles into action, institutionalization of supporting policies and budget provision that promotes TDA are suggested.

Even though TDA is not a new concept and many stakeholders understand its importance, TDA has not been widely exercised mainly due to conventional practices of experts and organizations working only within their groups and disciplines. With this understanding, this study has newly identified eight key elements that can be used as a guide and checklist for DRR stakeholders to effectively implement TDA for strengthening disaster resilience of their societies.

This paper aims to get an overview and determine the effect of the level of application of Islamic wealth management (IWM) and the level of business continuity of Muslim owners in influencing the level of household prosperity of Muslim micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The method of hypothesis testing is carried out through a quantitative approach. The type of analysis tool used is partial least square-structural equation modeling. The sample used is 212 Muslim MSME owners in Indonesia.

The results showed that the level of application of IWM, the level of business sustainability and the level of household prosperity of Muslim MSME owners were in the high category. All variables in this study showed positive and significant results.

The research conducted is still limited to households that act as MSME actors, so the respondents who are in it are still not diverse. Also, limited research tools and pandemic conditions led to filling out questionnaires based on respondents’ subjective views and difficulty asking questions when questions were not understood.

This research provides new insights focusing on the relationship between the variable level of application of IWM in influencing the welfare level of Muslim households who have MSMEs, where there is a role for the level of business sustainability as a mediator variable.

This paper aims to investigate the knowledge, attitude and behaviour of foundation chemistry learners concerning the sustainable development concept.

Qualitative and quantitative studies were conducted. Atlas.ti software was used to analyse the chemistry curriculum based on selected themes and sub-themes. A survey was carried out involving 132 chemistry learners. The chemistry learners were students from a foundation programme in a local university located in Selangor, Malaysia. The collected data were analysed using SPSS 21.0 involving descriptive and inferential statistics.

Document analysis on the chemistry curriculum shows that water is the theme most covered in the chemistry learners’ textbook, as compared to other themes. In general, the chemistry learners have good knowledge and attitude concerning the sustainable development concept. However, their knowledge and attitude do not reflect in their behaviour as an individual, as well as in the classroom. Moreover, their knowledge, attitude and behaviour focus more on environmental dimension, as compared to other sustainable development dimensions.

This paper is instrumental in assisting educators to assess how chemistry learners perceive sustainable development, and this may help to bring about changes to improve chemistry teaching and learning processes towards education for sustainable development.

This paper is an original and novel research paper which is first conducted on sustainable development concept in chemistry curriculum in Malaysia.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate political influential spreaders in Twitter at the juncture before and after the Malaysian General Election in 2013 (MGE2013) for the purpose of understanding if the political sphere within Twitter reflects the intentions, popularity and influence of political figures in the year in which Malaysia has its first “social media election.”

A Big Data approach was used for acquiring a series of longitudinal data sets during the election period. The work differs from existing methods focusing on the general statistics of the number of followers, supporters, sentiment analysis, etc. A retweeting network has been extracted from tweets and retweets and has been mapped to a novel information flow and propagation network we developed. The authors conducted quantitative studies using k-shell decomposition, which enables the construction of a quantitative Twitter political propagation sphere where members posited at the core areas are more influential than those in the outer circles and periphery.

The authors conducted a comparative study of the influential members of Twitter political propagation sphere on the election day and the day after. The authors found that representatives of political parties which are located at the center of the propagation network are winners of the presidential election. This may indicate that influential power within Twitter is positively related to the final election results, at least in MGE2013. Furthermore, a number of non-politicians located at the center of the propagation network also significantly influenced the election.

This research is based on a large electoral campaign in a specific election period, and within a predefined nation. While the result is significant and meaningful, more case studies are needed for generalized application for identifying potential winning candidates in future social-media fueled political elections.

The authors presented a simple yet effective model for identifying influential spreaders in the Twitter political sphere. The application of the authors’ approach yielded the conclusion that online “coreness” score has significant influence to the final offline electoral results. This presents great opportunities for applying the novel methodology in the upcoming Malaysian General Election in 2018. The discovery presented here can be used for understanding how different players of political parties engage themselves in the election game in Twitter. The approach can also be adopted as a factor of influence for offline electoral activities. The conception of a quantitative approach in electoral results greatly influenced by social media means that comparative studies could be made in future elections.

Existing works related to general elections of various nations have either bypassed or ignored the subtle links between online and offline influential propagations. The modeling of influence from social media using a longitudinal and multilayered approach is also rarely studied. This simple yet effective method provides a new perspective of practice for understanding how different players behave and mutually shape each other over time in the election game.

This paper aims to discuss the knowledge levels, attitudes and behaviours regarding the concept of sustainable development among pre-university programme educators, as well as the potential barriers and opportunities they face in adopting the concept of sustainable development in the teaching of the pre-university level chemistry module at a public university in Malaysia.

A survey was conducted with eight educators of a pre-university programme at a public university located in Selangor, Malaysia. This pre-university programme exposes students to advanced courses in science, which are very much like first-year university courses for candidates who are interested in gaining admission to degree programmes. For this study, the focus was on chemistry educators only. The collected data were analysed through descriptive analysis following which interviews were conducted with the respondents.

In general, the educators have good knowledge and attitudes towards the concept of sustainable development. Moreover, their projected knowledge (K), attitude (A) and behaviour (B) focus more on environmental dimensions, as opposed to other sustainable development dimensions. While the integration of the concept of sustainable development in chemistry teaching is restricted by a few barriers, such as content-based learning, lack of guidebooks related to sustainable development and an overcrowded curriculum, positive responses from the chemistry educators indicate that there are opportunities to implement sustainable chemistry concepts in the pre-university chemistry module.

The present study was conducted with several limitations; the data were obtained from a small sample size at an institute located within a public university. The respondents of this research consisted of only three existing chemistry educators and five administrators who are also educators. Further studies about sustainable chemistry teaching should include samples from other public and private universities.

This paper is instrumental in assisting the Ministry of Education, administrators, as well as educators within the pre-university sector to shift their goals towards sustainable chemistry teaching to achieve success in education for sustainable development.

The paper seeks to identify the major factors causing delay in building construction projects in Malaysia.

A questionnaire survey was used to carry out the study. The questionnaire consisted of 31 factors which were grouped into four major categories by responsibility – contractor factors, owner factors, consultant factors and external factors. The level of importance of the categories was measured and the relative importance of weights was ranked.

The study finds that financial problems are the main factor and coordination problems are the second most important factor causing delay in construction projects in Malaysia. The results were analyzed to rank the causes of delay and further classify the types of delay.

The scope of this study is limited to building projects in the Klang Valley area, where major Malaysian cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Petaling Jaya, Shah Alam and Seremban are located. The data for this study was gathered through a detailed questionnaire survey.

Based on the analysis of the ranking and intensity of causes of delay, this paper suggests possible improvements that could be made in order to reduce delays in the construction industry.

The Asian crisis, which exploded in Thailand in July 1997 initially, spilled to the other ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines) and later it spreads to Korea and even crossing the continent to Russia and Brazil. The chronological pattern seems to indicate the contagious behaviour of the crisis. However, the sequential economic down‐turns that occurred in the Asia Pacific do look like a contagion effect. The idea that currency speculators contributed to the depth of the crisis is agreeable but to conclude that they are the roots of the problem would be misleading. This paper argued that the roots of the problems lie in current account deficit and loss of competitiveness, and moral hazard and over‐investment This paper also argued that the currency crisis is a symptom and not the cause of the Asian crisis.

This study aims to analyze the effect of religiosity (RE), halal knowledge (HK) and halal certification (HC), attitudes, subjective norms and vaccine quality on the Muslim community’s intention to use halal vaccines in Indonesia.

This study involved 725 Muslim respondents in 32 Indonesian provinces. The model used was based on the theory of reasoned action development with the partial least squares structural equation modeling as the data processing tool.

The study discovered that RE, HK and HC did not affect the intention of Muslims to use halal vaccines. In addition, the MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia – Indonesia Council of Ulama) fatwa permitting the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine despite the haram ingredients was considered an excuse for Muslims to administer non-halal vaccines. However, several parties disagreed on the fatwa because the emergency legal standing for its permissibility did not apply to all regions. The reason was that each had different rates of confirmed cases, ranging from high-risk areas to those with zero confirmed Covid-19 cases.

This study examines the Muslim community’s intention toward using halal vaccines in several regions in Indonesia. In addition, this study conducted in-depth interviews as samples in several regions. This study also conducted interviews to determine the public’s views on government obligation about the Covid-19 vaccine. Finally, this study proposes a vaccine to avoid the possibility of controversy over the use of non-halal vaccines.

The relevant importance of enterprise architecture (EA) to an organization has gained the attention of the public sector. However, its adoption rate remains slow on the uptake. Thus, this study aims to investigate the various factors associated with adoption intention based on the technological, organizational and environmental framework for federal and state types of public organizations to provide greater predictive accuracy and relevance of EA adoption in Malaysia’s public sector (MPS) context.

An empirical study was conducted through an online survey in Malaysia. Based on 255 samples from public organizations throughout Malaysia, a multigroup analysis with partial least square structural equation modeling was performed to identify the respective influencing factors for adopting EA by federal and state organizations in the Malaysian public sector.

Five organizational factors (clear communication, normative pressure, expected benefit, good governance and organization size) and two environmental factors (coercive pressure and mimetic pressure) were found to be significant factors influencing adoption intention for EA. Additionally, clear communication and coercive pressure were noted to be significant factors influencing adoption for both federal and state organizations. Other significant factors for federal organizations include expected benefit and normative pressure, whereas for state organizations, another significant influencing factor was good governance. The predictive accuracy for federal organizations was slightly higher at 74.6% than that of state organizations, that is, at 65%.

These findings imply that federal and state organizations respond to different factors that motivate their intention to adopt EA. These findings guide future intentional practice and ensure greater motivation for EA adoption.

The identification of specific factors that matter to the federal and state public organizations in driving intention to adopt EA in this study has provided significant information that could help in effective decision-making process for these organizations. Common strategies that emphasize on clear communication and coercive pressure can be applied to address EA adoption processes for both federal and state public organizations. Further to that, more specified strategies such as highlighting expected EA benefits and instilling good governance work more effectively for federal and state, respectively.

This study has provided a more extensive view of EA adoption in MPS by differentiating the discerning factors based on the technological–organizational–environmental framework significant for federal and state types of organizations. Hence, this could help in formulating strategies specified to the organization type and ensure greater success in EA adoption in both federal and state organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dimensionality of the environmental concern scale (NEP) and to understand the environmental worldviews of Malaysian project managers.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among developer organisations registered with Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association Malaysia in Klang Valley. Response was obtained from project managers and the final sample collected was 87 cases, representing a response rate of 24.5 per cent. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation was conducted to investigate the underlying structure of the NEP items while frequency distribution for the data set was used to gauge the environmental worldviews of the respondents. In addition, face-to-face interviews were carried out to gather more information to complements the findings of quantitative analyses.

Five factors were extracted but due to heavy cross-loadings, two items from the original scale were dropped, reducing it to be a 13-item scale. The four factors retained explained 61.6 per cent of the variance and were duly named Human over nature, ecocrisis, rights of nature and limits of growth. High scores on both pro-NEP and pro-dominant social paradigm items revealed the co-existence of both ecological and utilitarian view of the environment among project managers. Similar outcome was obtained from interviews with project managers where they indicated efforts in finding compatibility between protecting the environment and exploiting natural resources for development.

The sample was restricted to housing developers in Klang Valley, thus the findings cannot be generalised to all developer organisations or other construction occupational groups.

This research supported the multidimensionality claim of the environmental scale (NEP) where four distinctive dimensions were identified. The usage of individual subscales in understanding environmental beliefs may reveal interesting patterns in that each dimension could have positive and negative connotations on human behaviours. In addition, the co-existence of both an ecological and a utilitarian view of the environment revealed that these worldviews align well with sustainable development principles.

This study is one of the few local studies that attempt to understand the environmental worldviews of project managers.