Flood resilience in Malaysian cities: a case study of two towns in Johor state Tej Kumar Karki School of Architecture, Design and Planning, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, India Abstract Purpose – This paper has carried out a case study of two flood-prone towns in Johor state, Malaysia, to understand how resilient the residents and local authorities were in dealing with the flood disasters in terms of their ability to anticipate, mobilize institutional resources, adapt and respond. Design/methodology/approach – This research conducted semi-structured interviews with flood- affected residents, flood disaster managers and planners, and assessed land use regulations and institutional strengths to answer the research question. Findings – The results showed that the residents’ anticipatory capacity to flood risks was weak and both the human and institutional resources were insufficient in coping with and responding to urban flooding. Research limitations/implications – This research has not carried out questionnaire survey of large number of residents. It is based on semi-structured interview of ten residents in two Malaysian cities. Practical implications – The insights drawn from this research would help develop flood-resilient policies for Malaysian cities. The global communities exposed to flood disasters too benefit from the Malaysia’s minute but crucial human and institutional experiences in urban flooding. Social implications – Being resilient to all these small but important flood concerns has huge potential to reduce vulnerability and disaster risks and protect the lives and properties of flood affected urban residents. Originality/value – The research focus in Malaysia is less on flood resilience and more on flood modeling and hydrology analysis. In this sense, this research is new because it talks more on flood vulnerability and resilience issues at the community level and gives a perspective on current Malaysian town’s state of flood resilience culture and practices. Keywords Urban flooding resilience, Climate-change uncertainty, Vulnerability, Institutional resilience, Individual resilience, Disaster risk reduction, Flood disaster reduction, Climate change Paper type Research paper Introduction Floods account for about 90 per cent of the natural disaster-related damages in Malaysia (Pradhan, 2009). It affects 4.9 million people every year (Mohit and Sellu, 2013), with average annual property damage worth US$100 million (Pradhan, 2009). In recent years, the flood incidents in Malaysia are on the rise (Aliagha et al., 2014). Often, the heavy rain and flooding show up suddenly by defying all the official flood forecasts (Chan, 2012). Scholars argue that when climate uncertainty defies the flood forecasts, one needs to raise the flood resilience of people and local government to save people’s lives and property. However, in Malaysia, the research focus is less on flood resilience and more on flood modeling and hydrological The author like to thank all the anonymous reviewers who spent their time and hard work in providing the feedback for this work Flood resilience in Malaysian cities 329 Received 24 June 2019 Revised 25 October 2019 12 November 2019 17 November 2019 Accepted 19 November 2019 International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment Vol. 11 No. 3, 2020 pp. 329-342 © Emerald Publishing Limited 1759-5908 DOI 10.1108/IJDRBE-06-2019-0037 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/1759-5908.htm