Tarmiji Masron - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Tarmiji Masron

Scientific Reports

Plasmodium knowlesi infections in Malaysia are a new threat to public health and to the national ... more Plasmodium knowlesi infections in Malaysia are a new threat to public health and to the national efforts on malaria elimination. In the Kapit division of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, two divergent P. knowlesi subpopulations (termed Cluster 1 and Cluster 2) infect humans and are associated with long-tailed macaque and pig-tailed macaque hosts, respectively. It has been suggested that forest-associated activities and environmental modifications trigger the increasing number of knowlesi malaria cases. Since there is a steady increase of P. knowlesi infections over the past decades in Sarawak, particularly in the Kapit division, we aimed to identify hotspots of knowlesi malaria cases and their association with forest activities at a geographical scale using the Geographic Information System (GIS) tool. A total of 1064 P. knowlesi infections from 2014 to 2019 in the Kapit and Song districts of the Kapit division were studied. Overall demographic data showed that males and those aged betwee...

Identifying the geographic areas with a high concentration of house break-in incidents is crucial... more Identifying the geographic areas with a high concentration of house break-in incidents is crucial in policing and prevention initiations. Despite the popularity of geographic information system in mapping residential burglary, not many studies have explored the significance level of the areas comprising crime to understand the severity of the hot spots. Hence, this study sought to identify the geographic location of the residential burglary hotspotsin Penang Island and explores their spatial configuration. The latest available (2011 to 2013) police-recorded incidents of house break-in for day and night were collected from Penang Islands Headquarters, Georgetown. Geocoding technique was used to map the exact postal address of the houses in GIS. This study applied two spatial analysis tools, namely ‘Getis-Ord or Gi*’ and ‘Average Nearest Neighbor’ to detect the locations of the hotspots of residential burglary hotspots. The results demonstrated a high clustering value for the resident...

According to the Australian Universities Community Alliance (AUCEA) (2006), engagement with the c... more According to the Australian Universities Community Alliance (AUCEA) (2006), engagement with the community may result in knowledge transfer and exchange, the commercialisation of intellectual property, the establishment of spin-off companies and joint venture activity between universities and community partner. Although the awareness of the importance of university-community engagement has increased, as reflected by the appointment of the Deputy Vice Chancellor to focus on Industry and Community Network and establishment of the University Community Transformation Centres, generally involvement of Malaysian universities in university-community activities is still not encouraging. This study is an attempt to explore the extent of university-community engagement carried out by academics of higher education institutions in Malaysia. This paper discusses part of the findings of a bigger study that explores various interrelated aspects of university community engagement in higher education institutions. It is aimed to deliberate on the extent that universities in Malaysia are conducting local and cross-border university-community engagement and the extent of academics involvement in university-community engagement programmes

Advances in Environmental Biology, 2015

In the technological era of the present time, the development of "information technology (IT)" ha... more In the technological era of the present time, the development of "information technology (IT)" has drastically transformed the tourism industry. Similarly, the "information and communication technology (ICT)" has enabled the modern tools and distribution channels for tourism. Thus, it has created a new tourism business environment. Moreover, the integration of "web technology" into "tourism decision support system (TDSS)" has formed the "web-based tourism decision support system (WBTDSS)". They usually vary in their capabilities, architectures, applications, and so each individual local system needs meticulous investigations. For this reason, thepresent paper reviewed the existing components of these systems and the specific capabilities of "Langkawi Island"s WBTDSS".The qualitative analysis of comparative studies showed that, the geographic information applications of this "WBTDSS" provide tourism-related information to tourists and others who browse the website. Furthermore, there is a distinguishing feature of this system; which is presenting the tourist information in the map format instead of the typical text descriptions. Therefore, it is concluded that the fundamental architectural components of "Langkawi WBTDSS" is analogous to other existing systems. However, the interactive map which can be edited by the clients is an additional feature of this system. Hence, tourists acquire information from the website and simultaneously contribute their new discoveries about the place after it has been approved by the main server side.

Geografia: Malaysian journal of society and space, 2016

Kajian ini adalah untuk mengenalpasti kawasan yang berisiko tinggi sebagai kawasan panas atau hot... more Kajian ini adalah untuk mengenalpasti kawasan yang berisiko tinggi sebagai kawasan panas atau hot-spot bagi penyalahgunaan dadah dalam kalangan belia di kawasan daerah Timur Laut, Pulau Pinang. Penggunaan data bagi tempoh dua tahun berturut-turut iaitu tahun 2013 dan 2014 bagi penyalahgunaan dadah digunapakai bagi mencapai objektif kajian ini. Objektif kajian ini adalah bagi mengenalpasti dan menentukan kawasan yang berisiko tinggi atau kawasan hot-spot bagi penyalahgunaan dadah di daerah Timur Laut, Pulau Pinang. Kes penyalahgunaan dadah mencatatkan peningkatan daripada tahun sebelumnya iaitu sebanyak 715 kes, manakala kes yang penigkatan paling tinggi dicatatkan antara kedua- dua tahun adalah Balai Polis Jalan Patani dan balai polis yang mencatatkan kes penyalahgunaan dadah yang terendah antara kedua- dua tahun pula adalah Balai Polis Kampung Baru. Kawasan hotspot antara kedua-dua tahun terdapat penurunan jumlah kawasan hot-spot iaitu 7 sektor yang diklasifikasikan sebagai kawasan...

Local knowledge (LK) has played an active role in the lives of rural communities in virtually eve... more Local knowledge (LK) has played an active role in the lives of rural communities in virtually every part of the world such as in agriculture. At the same time, the contribution of LK towards sustainable development is getting wider acceptance especially in today's agricultural practice. Therefore, continuous study to define the sustainability element is needed especially within community who still utilise LK. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the contribution of local knowledge practiced by the Iban farmers in lowland paddy cultivation located in the coastal areas of Sarawak in relation to the sustainable development context. The study was conducted in two Iban villages in Kuala Tatau namely Kuala Serupai and Sungai Semanok. There are 22 farmers of different age and gender involved in this research through in-depth interview, focus group discussion and participant observation that were carried out for a year. The findings show that this knowledge contribute to the three pillars of sustainability frame work such as socio-culture, socioeconomic and environment.

Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 2015

Tourism is an activity that implies the geographical dimension for users (the tourists) providers... more Tourism is an activity that implies the geographical dimension for users (the tourists) providers and planners. Besides its spatial dimension, tourism involves aspects of social, economic and environmental implications. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is particularly developed for the management purpose as well as to study the spatial phenomena. More specifically, the GIS is employed for developing, storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing the extensive amount of spatial and non-spatial data related to activities and resources. This paper is part of the “Development of Tourism Decision Support System (TDSS)” project of Sustainable Tourism Research Cluster (STRC) of Universiti Sains Malaysia. This paper focuses on a GIS-based spatial decision support system (SDSS) application that integrates GIS functions and SDSS designs with user friendly graphic user interfaces (GUI) in helping visitors of the Langkawi Island to choose and plan their activities more effectively, accordin...

IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2014

Spawning aggregation is a very important occurrence to particular reef fish species as they use t... more Spawning aggregation is a very important occurrence to particular reef fish species as they use this opportunity to reproduce. However, due to their predictable nature, these aggregations have always been vulnerable to overexploitation. This problem leads to the importance of identifying the exact time and location for reef fish spawning aggregation. Thus, this paper review a little bit about spawning aggregation of reef fish as well as their characteristics, and problems regarding this phenomena. The use of remote sensing in marine applications is also described here in order to discuss how remote sensing can be utilize to predict reef fish spawning aggregation. Based on the unique geomorphological characteristics of the spawning aggregation, remote sensing seems to be a powerful tool to determine their exact times and locations. It has been proved that satellite imagery was able to delineate specific reef geomorphologies such as shelf edges and reef promontories. Despite of the widely use of remote sensing in marine applications, in fact there are still lack of studies had been carried out regarding spawning aggregations of reef fish due to the skeptical point-ofview by certain researchers over the capability of this technique. However, there is actually no doubt that the use of remote sensing will provide a better hand to the authorities in order to establish a more effective monitoring and conservation plan for these spawning aggregations.

Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2013

The expectation and satisfaction level of tourists are required in order to identify the weakness... more The expectation and satisfaction level of tourists are required in order to identify the weaknesses that exist in an area. From there, improvements could be conducted to fulfil the needs of tourists regarding heritage elements and physical infrastructure that exists in a Heritage City. Heritage elements are significant as a main attraction force for tourists to visit historic areas. The need for infrastructure is important to improve tourist accessibility when they are visiting a destination. This research is conducted with the hope of studying the expectation and satisfaction of tourists when it comes to heritage elements and physical infrastructure at Melaka UNESCO World Heritage Site. This research applies the quantitative analysis through questionnaire survey forms to a total of 161 domestic and international tourists, together with visual analysis and inventories conducted for the core zone of Melaka City. The results from the visual analysis using the principal component analysis with varimax rotation has identified 24 relevant items that could be divided into three main factors such as heritage elements, infrastructure and supporting elements. From the analysis, the most dominant findings for heritage elements is the museum; in aspects of physical infrastructures, is the most accommodating centres, while facilities factor is in terms of trishaw services. This most dominant finding shows the level of satisfaction accepted by the tourists. On the whole, the satisfaction level is higher than the expected outcomes regarding heritage elements, infrastructure and supporting facilities.

The failure of the colonial government to develop the economic sector for this state was due to t... more The failure of the colonial government to develop the economic sector for this state was due to the adoption of a biased development approach. The biased approach focused on the potential of existing urban areas, and on economic growth oriented rather than distributed growth. Various economic development projects had been implemented since Sarawak became part of Malaysia. As the biggest state in the country with multi-ethnic population, Sarawak definitely needs more strategic development approach and attention from the central government. The Ninth Malaysia Plan has shown that spatial inequality in Sarawak has widened and needs attention. The launching of Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) marked the shift to the new approach of development in improving the spatial inequality in Sarawak through regional development strategy. This paper discusses the spatial inequality in Sarawak and explore the potential role of SCORE in regional development

PLANNING MALAYSIA, 2021

Over time, the relation between criminal acts with drug abuse cases has been discussed pedantical... more Over time, the relation between criminal acts with drug abuse cases has been discussed pedantically. From social and spatial points of view, this paper aims to determine the hot spot areas of burglary cases in the Northeast Penang Island District and Kuching District. The gained results of burglary cases are then being correlated with the presence of drug abuse cases. Both study areas came with location coordinates of the incident based on police stations boundaries and police station sector boundaries from the year 2015. The type of analysis used for this research is Optimized Hot Spot Analysis. Results for burglary cases of both areas are divided into two (2) which are daytime and nighttime. The spatial analysis revealed that there are five (5) sectors identified as hot spots for the Northeast Penang Island District which involve Jelutong Police Station boundary and Ayer Itam Police Station boundary, while none of the areas identified as hot spot areas in Kuching District.

This article describes changes in the spatial distribution of Peninsular Malaysia’s population fo... more This article describes changes in the spatial distribution of Peninsular Malaysia’s population for the period 1980 to 2000. Spatial concentration is measured by using Hoover’s Population Concentration Index. The analysis highlights the findings that overall, the population distribution was rather even for the Peninsula – neither too concentrated nor too dispersed. Nevertheless, the distribution was a little more concentrated in 2000 as compared to 1980 and 1991. In regional terms, the Southern Region proved to have the most dispersed population distribution although the trend seemed to be towards greater concentration by the year 2000. The region with the most consistently concentrated population distribution during the period observed was the Central Region. Conversely, the Eastern Region’s population distribution continued to be dispersed through out the period. State-wise, Kelantan had the most concentrated pattern while Penang the most widespread. The paper concludes that given ...

An Investigation into the Effect of Managers' Leadership Strategies on the Productivity of Road C... more An Investigation into the Effect of Managers' Leadership Strategies on the Productivity of Road Construction Workers in Iran .

Mountains and hills (hereinafter referred to as mountains) are a special part of God’s creation. ... more Mountains and hills (hereinafter referred to as mountains) are a special part of God’s creation. In addition to being mentioned in the Qur’an as being “bolts” of the Earth and water catchment areas, mountains are seen in a variety of religious and cultural traditions as being sacred and special places. There are thus many Asian literary works that boast of mountains existing in their locations. This paper seeks to examine why mountains are such an important element in the life of society by examining them in terms of their location and function. This study will use spatial information technologies such as Geographic Information System (GIS) to aid understanding of literary works, namely by taking the views of Harvey (1973) that “geographical space has a close relationship with the culture of a place”. Thus the location of an area will be linked to its function in terms of cultural space, social space, economic space, ideological space, and space movement. In this article, GIS will b...

Tourism consists of a wide variety of aspects including facilities, activities, services, and ind... more Tourism consists of a wide variety of aspects including facilities, activities, services, and industries to deliver a travel experience. This industry depends heavily on information where customers want to acquire enough information about a tourist destination. This paper presents a Web based GIS which designs with user friendly graphic user interfaces (GUI) to help visitors of Langkawi Island choose and plan their activities more effectively to match their personal preferences and constraints. This paper focus on displaying tourism related information in Langkawi Island, which tourist care o restaurants, hotels, and marketplaces and so on, so that customers can easily obtain adequate information and become attracted to visit the island. This paper is part of the Project “Development of Tourism Decision Support System (TDSS)” under Sustainable Tourism Research Cluster (STRC), Universiti Sains Malaysia.

Geografia: Malaysian journal of society and space, 2021

The implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) had taken place in peninsular Malaysia for 20... more The implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) had taken place in peninsular Malaysia for 20 years (1970-1990). It was formulated as a social re-engineering in the aftermath of the 13th of May 1969 Incident. The NEP was “as simple as two eyes” because it targeted to eradicate poverty and at the same time to restructure society in order to eliminate the identification of race with economic function. The objectives reflected that the NEP was focusing on demographic aspects, particularly targeted at eyeing the division of races based on economic function. In conjunction with that, this article aims to study the changes in racial segregation in peninsular Malaysia from 1980 until 2010. To strengthen the findings, this article introduces spatial elements to geo-visualize the long-term changes in the spatial pattern of racial segregation in peninsular Malaysia. In terms of statistical analysis, racial segregation was calculated by using the Entropy Index. In the course of spatial ana...

Akademika, 2001

This article attempts to look into the changes in the spatial pattern of racial segregation in Pe... more This article attempts to look into the changes in the spatial pattern of racial segregation in Penang from 1980 to 1991. Racial segregation is measured using Entropy Index. Several scenarios related to the segregation phenomena is highlighted such as the pattern ofsegregation that existed between the two time periods, change as well as the pattern of change that have occurred and thefactors that might have contributed to these changes. Geographical information system (GIS was used to assist in understanding the spatial variation of racial segregation. Result of the study indicates that in general the segrega- tion level in Penang is relatively low. However: segregation has slightly increased from 1980 to 1991. The study has also found out that there was spatial variation in the distribution of segregation at the mukim level for both time periods. Keyword: Racial segregation, geographical information system, entrophy index, spatial pattern, development ABSTRAK Artikel in; cuba meninj...

The development and urbanization process in Malaysia has changed the face the earth. Land fill wi... more The development and urbanization process in Malaysia has changed the face the earth. Land fill with tress and vegetation was replaced with concrete buildings and paved roads, which have an impact on the rate of heat production and retention. This research was conducted to study the increasing temperature in major cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Kelantan and Johor Bahru. This study used the NOAA -AVlHRR satellite data because it covers wide areas such as the whole of Peninsular Malaysia. The split window technique was used to extract the temperature from the NOAAÂ·AVHRH data. This method saved money, time and transportation costs, and it is suitable for wide area study. A comparison between the NOAA-AVHRR temperature data with the actual data collected by the weather stations in the above mentioned cities, showed no significant differences at< 1"C. This means the accuracy of the NOAA-AVHRR can be trusted and accepted.

Geografia: Malaysian journal of society and space, 2017

For the past 90 years Malaysia has experienced rapid urban population growth. Beginning with town... more For the past 90 years Malaysia has experienced rapid urban population growth. Beginning with towns which grew from colonial tin mining and trading and spices industries, urban growth had proceeded in tandem with population growth and economic modernisation. This article discusses the process of population growth and urbanisation in Peninsular Malaysia from 1911 to 2000 whereby urban population data from population and housing census were utilised to analyse the spatial distribution of towns in the region. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to analyse the spatial distribution and growth centres of the cities involved. The period spanning 1957 and 2000 was chosen to look at this phenomenon. In 1957 the number of cities recorded was only 33; this had increased by 400 per cent to 140 in 2000. The analysis also found concentration tendencies of Peninsular Malaysia’s urbanisation as testified by the rise of urban growth centres in Peninsular Malaysia for the same period examined...

This study is conducted to establish a community based flood management system that is integrated... more This study is conducted to establish a community based flood management system that is integrated with remote sensing technique. To understand local knowledge, the demographic of the local society is obtained by using the survey approach. The local authorities are approached first to obtain information regarding the society in the study areas such as the population, the gender and the tabulation of settlement. The information about age, religion, ethnic, occupation, years of experience facing flood in the area, are recorded to understand more on how the local knowledge emerges. Then geographic data is obtained such as rainfall data, land use, land elevation, river discharge data. This information is used to establish a hydrological model of flood in the study area. Analysis were made from the survey approach to understand the pattern of society and how they react to floods while the analysis of geographic data is used to analyse the water extent and damage done by the flood. The fin...