UP steps up fight against disasters, climate change
MANILA, Philippines — “Nowhere to go but up,” goes the University of the Philippines (UP)’s battle cry. But not when it comes to floodwaters, as it would prefer the levels to stay down.
This is why the country’s premier state university, through the UP Resilience Institute-NOAH Center, is building science-based systems for flood management, disaster risk reduction and climate resilience.
“We want to change the name from flood control to flood management because that is the only thing we can do. The moment we start to think that we can be better than nature, then we are already wrong,” UP Resilience Institute (UPRI) executive director Mahar Lagmay said in a press conference on Thursday.
“We want to live with nature. We want to manage floods. We cannot control them,” he added.
Through innovation, education, partnerships and public service, UPRI-NOAH is transforming scientific knowledge into practical action that protects lives and helps build safer, more resilient and sustainable communities.
The institute provides nationwide hazard information covering floods, landslides, storm surges, tsunamis and coastal hazards.
Its stronger and expanded systems may likewise play a role in helping prevent billions in flood control funds from being flushed down the drain again.
By finding the right answers through science, engineering and technologies, Lagmay said the hope is that the country would not repeat the same mistakes of the past.
“Hazards will always happen here in the Philippines, but if we’re smart in handling nature, we’ll be able to prevent disasters from happening,” Lagmay said.
“The way we think is anticipatory. That is what we need in disaster risk reduction. That is what we need for climate change. We want to simulate and find out what the results will be even before we start the project,” he added.
Living with natural hazards
UP president Angelo Jimenez shared that the Philippines is one of the countries most exposed to natural hazards, with an average of 20 tropical cyclones every year.
He said local communities face floods, landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, storm surges, drought, extreme heat and the increasingly unpredictable effects of a changing climate.
“The reality is: we cannot prevent a typhoon from forming. We cannot stop the rain from falling. But we can make better decisions before the rain comes,” Jimenez noted.
For Jimenez, that is the promise of science serving the Filipino people and that is what the UPRI is doing.
“We can know where water is likely to go. We can identify which communities and infrastructure are most exposed. We can understand how a proposed intervention will perform before billions of pesos are spent building it,” he said.
“And we can give government and communities the information they need to act — not after disaster strikes, but before,” Jimenez added.
Established in 2016, UPRI is a proactive and dynamic research and advisory hub aimed at empowering communities with scientific and practical tools for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
Its core component is the UP NOAH Center, which UP formally adopted in 2017 as a research center for climate actions and disaster risk reduction and management.
Jimenez, however, said that technology, hazard mapping, flood intelligence and geospatial analysis are not the end.
He said the end is a safer Filipino community and a family that receives a warning early enough to get to safety. It likewise includes a local government that knows where its vulnerabilities are before it decides where to build or allow others to build.
“The end is a national government that can examine whether a flood management intervention is actually appropriate before committing billions of pesos to it,” Jimenez said.
“And the end is public investment guided by evidence rather than guesswork. This is why this funding is important not only for UPRI-NOAH, but for the country,” he added.
UPRI-NOAH has received P1 billion from the Department of Budget and Management, which it will utilize to strengthen the country’s capacity to generate, manage, communicate, as well as apply scientific information for disaster risk reduction, flood management, environmental protection and climate resilience.
Looking ahead, UPRI-NOAH is committed to expand the coverage, resolution, accuracy and usefulness of its services, while strengthening public education and graduate programs, developing innovative technologies and connecting research more closely with government planning and investment decisions.
It said that long-term collaboration among universities, government, civil society, industry, international organizations and communities would combine scientific expertise, local knowledge, sound governance and public participation.
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