ID: 1495
Presenting Author: ALIAS BIN RAMELI
Session: 552 - Accelerating with Integrity: Strengthening Social Impact Assessment in the face of urgency and misinformation
Status: pending
Malaysia repositions SIA as a digital-era communication strategy—leveraging local engagement, advanced technologies, and AI—to counter false narratives, rebuild public trust, and enhance acceptance of
In today’s unfiltered and fast-moving information landscape, development projects can face public rejection driven by viral yet inaccurate narratives. In Malaysia—a rapidly developing country with rich cultural diversity and grassroots sensitivities—the challenge lies not only in implementing projects, but in securing public trust through credible communication. Social Impact Assessment (SIA), mandated under the Town and Country Planning Act 1976, has evolved beyond a compliance tool. It now functions as a strategic communication platform to address both misinformation (unintentionally false information) and disinformation (deliberately misleading narratives). PLANMalaysia, the national planning agency, has adopted proactive strategies such as grassroots dialogues, community facilitators, visual simulations using VR and GIS, and multilingual, culturally adapted communication materials. This paper presents real-world experiences where project implementation was threatened by misleading information, and highlights Malaysia’s response through innovative, tech-enabled communication. It also explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support public sentiment analysis, early detection of misinformation trends, and the delivery of community-specific messages tailored to local needs. Malaysia’s approach demonstrates that SIA can serve as a trust-building bridge between authorities and the public, especially in the face of contested narratives. It positions SIA not merely as an assessment tool, but as a communication framework for transparent, inclusive, and respons
Datuk TPr Dr. Alias Rameli, Director General of PLANMalaysia, is a distinguished urban and regional planning professional with three decades of expertise, focusing on planning law, housing, smart city
Coauthor 1: SAIDIN BIN LATEH