“But what if I tell you that we have the power to outsmart these floods at the touch of our fingertips? challenges that come their way.”
The Senate Blue Ribbon investigation on the flood control anomalies has been on my social media feeds for over a month. As new names are being dropped like a bomb, the investigation has escalated, but no single individual has been sent to jail as of this writing. Yet a man who stole a P189 corned beef to satisfy his hunger got jailed immediately. At the same time, billions of our hard-earned taxes are spent on luxury, and no single named individual is behind bars.
Behind this backdrop are the continuous torrential rains flooding the common Juan, and life has to go on so that he can put food on the table. Not to mention the taxes he needs to pay every 15th and 30th so that the nepo babies can “flex” their newest luxury bag.
What seems to be a cycle of suffering for every Filipino is a system we just have to wait and pray to change in the months to come.
But what if I tell you that we have the power to outsmart these floods at the touch of our fingertips?
A group of academics from De La Salle University’s engineering and business disciplines came up with a flood monitoring device using the Internet of Things (IOT) (Arante, et. al., 2025) and eventually undertook a usability study to put this monitoring device to the public’s reasonable use. Like any other research, it gathered data from individuals testing the website prototype and compared it to the now-defunct Project NOAH of the PNoy Administration. This research was conceptualized years before the flood control project fiasco came about.
The insights of the participants were useful, such as real-time live monitoring through the use of the CCTV cameras installed by the LGUs, to Google Maps or WAZE integration, and making the flood monitoring an application free to use from the Google Play Store (for Android phones) or App Store (for iPhones).
While the study is still in its prototype phase and the usability study publication is still under review, it would be a promising website or app for every Filipino commuter. It can inform you of the height of the flood and the time it subsides. It contains visual cues such as the height of the average Filipino and a car to know the depth of the flood. Further, there are also color warnings we are familiar with when it comes to floods, such as yellow, orange, and red, incorporated into the website design.
Growing up as a Gen X-er, I remember that we had to tune in to the AM radio early in the morning to wait for class cancellations that rarely happened during my years as a student. These days, students have the power of social media to get information regarding class cancellations. However, recently, there have been a lot of hits and misses on cancelling classes while the sun is shining brightly on a clear sky.
But the common Juan in our story is not spared from these cancellations. The education sector is spared, sometimes the government, but never the private sector. It will always be at the will of these firms to give leeway to their employees, whether they come to work or not. It is fortunate for the firms that are in a hybrid work mode. But what about the manual laborers who are paid daily?
That’s why we in academia relentlessly research how to make our outputs create an impact on our society. Through this column, we hope it reaches the attention of the funding agencies to make this research large-scale and eventually become a product everyone can use. Suppose our mobile devices and the apps installed control our lives from when we get up in the morning until we close our eyes at night. Wouldn’t it be great if we could outsmart the weather and be guided in our daily commute through this app?
Alvin Neil A. Gutierrez grew up in a flood-prone street with his share of horror stories about floods, typhoons, and other natural calamities. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management and Organization of the DLSU Ramon V. Del Rosario College of Business, teaching undergraduate students to be change agents of society.
The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty, and its administrators.
