GED0101 College Academic Skills in English (Section 89)

Dr. Mahar Lagmay stated “Too tired of counting dead bodies”. Without doubt, it is tiring

and frustrating to experience the same unfortunate reality. Especially, if you could have done

something to prevent it from happening over again. Think of this, you have this concrete plan,

which you work hard but then you can not do anything about it. A person only wanted to help but

then again have been rejected. That was actually one of the underlying problems that most

scientists faced. Certainly, Dr. Lagmay is one of them. With his project NOAH he aim to combine

science and technology for disaster and risk reduction and management of the country. It is

shameful that we rejected someone who could have done a breakthrough in such an important

field. The government should not abolish project NOAH considering that it help in garnering an

in-depth study of the country’s physical geography, generate preventive measures, and properly

impose safety precautions during such occurrences.

It is important that experts should have an in-depth study of the Philippines’ physical

geography. Thus, it oversees the natural processes of the Earth, such as predicting climate. By

knowing this people would have known how to adapt to the available resources and climate

patterns. As humans migrated across the world, they are ought to adapt to all the changing

conditions they were exposed to in order to survive. For instance, the physical geography of the

Philippines, “It is an archipelago that comprises of 7,107 islands and is divided into three island

groups: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Philippines is located in the western Pacific Ocean,

surrounded by naturally warm waters that will likely get even warmer as average sea-surface

temperatures continue to rise. Making it the locus of tropical cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes and

volcanic eruptions.”
 Furthermore, the Global Climate Risk Index 2015 listed the Philippines as the number one

most affected by climate change, using the 2013 data. According to Dr. Bernard Alan Racoma of

University of the Philippines, our country has long been particularly vulnerable to extreme

weather. In recent years the nation has suffered from even more violent storms like Typhoon

Haiyan. On average, about 20 tropical cyclones enter Philippine waters each year, with eight or

nine making landfall. And over the past decade, these tropical storms have struck the nation more

often and more severely, scientists believe that it is because of climate change. In addition, two

factors unique to the Philippines; its geography and development have combined to worsen both

this threat and its devastating consequences.

Philippines as an agricultural country, Filipino farmers and their families bear the greatest

brunt of food insecurity and malnutrition in the country as prolonged droughts and extreme

precipitation affect their crop yields. Climate change is altering production systems and

compromising food security and nutrition for millions of people in the Philippines, according to

the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO). José Manuel Fernandéz FAO’s

country representative in the Philippines, said that amid an annual population growth rate of 1.5

per cent, the Philippines now have an estimated 105 million people, the 13th biggest population in

the world. This means a bigger threat to food security in the country. “Due to climate change, crop

yields are expected to decline by 25 per cent in tropical countries like the Philippines. Catches of

main fish species are also expected to decline by 40 per cent” (Fernandez, 2017).

That is what these storms mean for the Philippines’ economy. According to (Legarda,

2013): a destructive typhoon season costs the nation two percent of its gross domestic product

(GDP). It costs another two percent to rebuild the infrastructure lost, putting the Philippines at
least four percent in the hole each year from tropical storms. And when you are a nation aspiring

to grow and create better lives for your citizens, this regular hit to the economy is the last thing

you can afford.

With that, developmental factors have made it difficult for the Philippines to prepare and

respond to disasters. Evacuation plans, early-warning systems, and shelters are critical to dealing

with extreme weather events. Warning and relocating thousands or millions of citizens when a

storm is approaching would be a substantial problem for any country, and in the case of a

developing nation like the Philippines with nearly 100 million citizens spread out across thousands

of islands, this problem becomes bigger still.

This unfortunate event can be solve, through the Project NOAH of Dr. Lagmay. According

to National Institute of Geographic Sciences, University of the Philippines, the Nationwide

Operational Assessment of Hazards (Project NOAH) is program which undertakes disaster science

research development, advances the use of cutting edge technologies and promotes innovative

information services for government’s disaster prevention and mitigation efforts.

“Through the use of the use of science and technology and in partnership with the academe

and other stake holders, the Department of Sciences and Technology (DOST) takes a

multidisciplinary approach in developing systems, tools, and other technologies that could be used

by the government, in particular the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council

(NDRRMC) and the Office of Civil Defense, in efforts to mitigate the adverse impacts of extreme

natural events. By investing in new technologies and new scientific approaches to disaster

mitigation, Project NOAH seeks to enhance disaster management and prevention capacity of the

Philippines.” (Lagmay, 2012)

 Conferring from the Journal of Environmental Sciences (2013), “The initial efforts of

Project NOAH include: deployment of weather-related sensors such as rain gauges and water-level

sensors; use of state-of-the-art methods to construct high resolution flood and landslide hazard

maps that are relevant to the community; delivery of readily accessible, timely and accurate

hazards information through various media and communication platforms; multidisciplinary

disaster research and development; integration of disaster efforts by national government,

academe, civil society organizations and private sector; empowerment of Local Government Units

and communities by providing easy access to near-real-time data and information; and the

application of a bottom-up disaster prevention approach for more resilient communities.”

For instance, it provides advisories to specific coastal communities depending on the

predicted height of storm surges in affected localities, which will be among the basis for evacuation

of local government units (LGUs). Project NOAH's maps are different in that they are "scenario

maps," which simulate what can happen given a hazard level. The program is designed to help

address the nation's perennial problems brought about by ill-informed decisions during disasters.

Through its website and social media accounts, the project provides real-time weather data and

high-resolution flood, landslide, and storm surge hazard maps.

The high-resolution static flood maps are necessary for planning localized emergency

response (i.e., evacuation and access routes, road closures) and for people to become aware of the

hazards in their community (Lagmay, 2011). Longer term development plans of cities can be based

on these high-resolution flood hazard maps and compromised areas should be avoided in future

development.
 The flood reporting system on the other hand is a web-based interactive map that shows

flood levels in Metro Manila. It was originally created to serve as a permanent record of the Ondoy

floods to help keep future residents of the metropolis reminded of the catastrophe. Refinements to

the system, including crowd sourcing and filtering, now allow inputs for floods in Metro Manila

spawned by any type of rainfall event (Victorino et al., 2016)

This is not an easy problem to fix, but we need to try. The first step is educating citizens in

the Philippines about what the nation is facing, and about the practical clean-energy solutions

available that can begin to address the harmful effects of climate change in the country.

To disseminate such critical information to as wide an audience as possible, a Web-GIS

using mashups of freely available source codes and application program interface (APIs) was

developed and can be found in the URLs http:// noah.dost.gov.ph and http://noah.up.edu.ph/. This

Web-GIS tool is now heavily used by local government units in the Philippines in their disaster

prevention and mitigation efforts and can be replicated in countries that have a proactive approach

to address the impacts of natural hazards but lack sufficient funds.

Project NOAH is made up of about 20 disaster science research and development projects,

and maps and forecasts floods, storm surges, landslides, and other natural hazards. The data it

collects were formerly available in its blog, which has been transitioned into the UP NOAH Center

webpage. The new page boasts a mobile-adaptive interface that makes it easier for people to view

the site on their mobile phones and tablets, and contains stories and information that would be

helpful in disaster mitigation.Despite the new website, the NOAH application for Android and

iOS, as well as other platforms, are still functional. Internet access allowed the town's disaster

management office to monitor updates on rainfall and wind speed from state weather bureau
Pagasa, and storm surge alerts from Project NOAH, which were released two days before the

typhoon struck. (Dimacili, 2018)

Pertinent meteorological data from DOST-PAGASA and DOST-ASTI, flood maps

generated by the Disaster Risk Exposure Assessment and Mitigation (DREAM)/LiDAR program

and rainfall prediction of the ClimateX component of Project NOAH are now collected and

displayed in the website. This website is currently hosted in the Amazon Web Services platform

and local Philippine servers housed at DOST-ASTI. To ensure continuity of service even during

periods of heavy access, all disaster layers were placed and cached in a GeoServer in DOST-ASTI

while near-real-time data from the sensors and PAGASA Doppler Radar stations are pulled from

DOST-ASTI servers. (Saddi, 2017)

The Doppler Radar images contain important rainfall intensity information derived from

Radar reflectivity readings. Detected clouds are colored to represent the calculated rainfall

intensity in mm/hr. It helps determine if the rain cloud hovering an area could precipitate light,

moderate, heavy, intense or torrential type of rain. The colored scale bar to the left of the panel

serves as reference to the meaning of the color with respect to the intensity of occurring rain.

Computer-assisted mapping which can build scenarios of possible hazards allows an

understanding of disaster problems that beset us. It can be utilized to avoid surprise. The staggering

impacts of Tropical Storm Ondoy and Typhoon Haiyan caught everyone unprepared by not

realizing that such magnitude of inundation can occur. Elevated places normally not flooded were

inundated and this could have been recognized in advance, information that is crucial for disaster

preparedness.
 With its color-coded and detailed hazard maps, disaster officials would also be aware of

which areas were safe or unsafe for relocation sites. Programmers of Project NOAH created

mapping platform mashups to tailor fit the web product for disaster response and mitigation

purposes. These mashups combine public domain web information with open Application

Programming Interfaces (or APIs) to facilitate communication between the mapping platform and

different data sources. OpenLayers, an open-source dynamic mapping platform is used in the

Project NOAH website to embed the web map service of Google and other online mapping services

such as OpenStreetMap on a webpage. (Ayco, 2017)

Using this platform, sensor data and hazard maps are overlain to achieve the end product

of which is a web-based disaster Geographic Information System (Web-GIS) dedicated for

addressing Philippine disaster problems. Society would need to embrace the program and make it

a rallying point for establishing a culture of safety.

The latest government initiative of government seeks to share critical data to the public in

order to empower communities. Project NOAH allows access to supplementary information apart

from those already provided by civil authorities for local government units to have more facts

available as basis for making critical decisions to defend themselves against imminent danger. The

near-real-time information streamed through the internet and broadcast through other media

platforms make full use of technological advances in mass communication for the benefit of people

at risk from natural hazards. However, the government will scrap its flagship disaster management

initiative, the Department of Science and Technology's Project NOAH or Nationwide Operational

Assessment of Hazards, starting March due to lack of funds for the program.
 Project NOAH help in garnering an in-depth study of the country’s physical geography,

generate preventive measures, and properly impose safety precautions during such occurrences are

enough reasons for the government to not abolish this program. If this program would still be going

during disastrous occurrences then Filipinos are prepared enough to face it.
Ballano, V.O. (2017). Law, normative pluralism, and post-disaster recovery. The Case of the

Philippines. Singapore: Spring Nature.

Boquet, Y. (2017). A tropical archipelago. The Philippine Archipelago: 37-48. Swizerland:

Springer International Publishing.

Comiso et al., (2014). Impacts on agriculture and natural resources. Changing Philippine Climate:

242-247. Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press.

Gaillard, J.C. (2015). People’s response to disasters in the Philippines. Does Risk Perception

Really Matter. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishing.

Hillman, F. (2015). Environmental change, adaptation and migration: Bringing in the region. Rellocating
the Nexus of Migration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pulhin, J.M. (2010). Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction: An asian perspective.

Impacts of Disasters on Different Sectors: 242-247. United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing
Limited.

http://www.etravelpilipinas.com/about_philippines/philippine_geography.htm

https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/how-climate-change-affecting-philippines

https://www.eco-business.com/news/climate-change-will-impact-philippines-ability-to-feed-its-
people/

http://www.neda.gov.ph/addressing-impacts-climate-change-philippine-agriculture-sector/

https://www.rappler.com/brandrap/climate-change

https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/30/17/da-chief-wants-to-save-project-noah

https://www.philstar.com/business/science-and-environment/2017/02/02/1668037/govt-shuts-
down-project-noah

Disseminating near-real-time hazards information and flood maps in the Philippines through
Web-GIS Alfredo Mahar Francisco A. Lagmay⁎
, Bernard Alan Racoma, Ken Adrian Aracan, Jenalyn
Alconis-Ayco, Ivan Lester Saddi National Institute of Geological Sciences, University of the
Philippines, Philippines