MANILA, June 03 (PIA) -- Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson said Thursday that improved river flow management in the Philippines will be vital to protecting communities from the effects of climate change.
This, after the DPWH, in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Water Security for Resilient Economic Growth and Stability (Be Secure) Project, soft launched a portal that will serve as a source of open data for monitoring and management of river flows in the country.
"With online information sharing, the public, and more importantly our disaster managers and planners will be able to use the data provided by our website to ensure public safety and safer infrastructures in the face of climate change," Singson said.
The DPWH is on track to come up with a fully functional website by October 2016 that will transform DPWH’s "current stream flow data sets" into digitized format to be used in incorporating measures to flood mitigation and management.
“For a while now, access to river flow information is limited and has been only available upon request. With the launching the Riverflow Management System website, we will have accessible records and maps of river flow stations initially from river gauging stations in Regions 6, 8, 9, 10, and 12,” he said.
The website, to be handled by DPWH Bureau of Design - Water Projects Division (BOD-WPD), will also utilize short messaging service (SMS) or text messaging to report real time situation of major rivers. The data gathered from these reports, once verified, will be included in the main database for use by planners, researchers, and disaster managers.
"The historical information of river flow data is used to generate a discharge measurement that allows engineers, and water resources planners to use this information to design sustainable and resilient infrastructures and to plan for the country’s water resources," Singson said.
“It will eventually operate on a nationwide scale and will be beneficial in terms of water resource regulation, flood control and management, in localized disaster risk planning, and in coming up with water resources development plans across the country,” he added.
The USAID Be Secure Project, for its part, would provide technical assistance through training, and in advancing the data gathering technology through the website. DPWH national and field staff will work with USAID and other government agencies in order to improve data collection and analysis based on the unique characteristics of river basins in the country.
The website supports the National Hydrologic Data Collection Program. (RJB/JCP/PIA-NCR)
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