*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, DM
I was rummaging through old boxes in our storage room on a
quiet morning, doing the kind of task one delays until the heart is finally
ready to remember. Beneath piles of old documents, medals from youthful
triumphs, and faded certificates, I found a small children’s book I had not
touched since grade school. It was Noah’s Ark — its cover softened by age, its
pages fragile, yet its illustrations still full of color and innocence. The
image of Noah standing before the rising storm struck me deeply. As a child, I
simply admired the animals in pairs. As an adult, a professor of governance and
public safety, and someone who has witnessed the consequences of political
decisions, I suddenly understood why that story remains timeless. Disasters
were never just about the rain. They were about preparation. Noah survived not
because he was lucky, but because he listened, he foresaw, he acted before the
storm arrived. He built the ark when the world still laughed at the possibility
of a flood. It dawned on me that the true tragedy is not the storm itself, but
the refusal of leaders to prepare for it.
Holding that book, I could not avoid seeing Project NOAH as
our modern counterpart to the biblical ark — not made of wood and nails, but of
models, data, sensors, satellites, and hazard maps. Built by Filipino
scientists with brilliance and compassion, Project NOAH was designed to give
our nation foresight before destruction, information before panic, and
understanding before loss. It was a scientific sanctuary that could transform
uncertainty into preparedness, confusion into clarity, and helplessness into
resilience. It did not promise to stop floods any more than Noah promised to
stop the rain, but it promised survival. And survival, in disaster governance,
is everything.
Project NOAH offered the country a rare gift: the ability to
turn natural hazards into predictable events. Through hydrological models,
real-time rainfall analytics, geospatial simulations, and barangay-level hazard
mapping, it gave decision-makers a clear window into the future. It empowered
LGUs and national agencies to anticipate where rivers would swell, which
communities would flood, which roads would become impassable. It turned the
unpredictable into something manageable, giving people the chance to live
another day. Yet, the true power of Project NOAH extended beyond disaster
science. It provided something even more threatening to the political status
quo: accountability. Science, when public and transparent, is a mirror that
cannot be fogged. It exposes discrepancies between what is claimed and what is
real. It reveals inconsistencies in engineering plans, procurement documents,
and flood-mitigation projects. It challenges decisions that defy physical laws.
It resists manipulation. It demands honesty.
This is why the weakening of Project NOAH’s institutional
foundation under the Duterte administration remains one of the most
consequential turning points in our national disaster governance history. It is
factually accurate to state that President Rodrigo Duterte did not directly
shut down Project NOAH. There was no executive order dissolving it, no official
pronouncement condemning it. But it is equally important to recognize what was
not said and what was not done. When DOST announced that funding would end,
there was no intervention from the highest office to preserve the project. No
effort to sustain it. No sense of urgency to protect a program that had saved
countless lives. When a vital national institution is left to die without
resistance, the silence becomes its executioner. The ark was not dismantled; it
was abandoned at the shore.
What adds to this sorrow is that even in the administration
of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., no substantial step has been
taken to restore Project NOAH, institutionalize it, or reintegrate it into our
national disaster management framework. Despite worsening climate patterns,
despite repeated community flooding, despite the intensifying need for
real-time hazard intelligence, and despite the enormous value NOAH brings to
evidence-based governance, it remains outside the government’s core structure.
It continues to operate only because the University of the Philippines embraced
it and refused to let it vanish. It survives today not by governmental will,
but by academic compassion. And that is both admirable and heartbreaking.
The heartbreak becomes more pronounced when we consider the
present flood control scandal — a convergence of corruption, incompetence, and
political betrayal. Billions of pesos were allocated to dredging rivers,
constructing drainage systems, reinforcing embankments, and erecting
flood-control structures. Yet so many communities remain submerged after only
an hour of rain. Rivers allegedly dredged still hold the same volume they did
before. Drainage systems supposedly improved fail almost instantly. Structures
built with astounding budgets sit in locations that NOAH’s models would have
flagged as low-priority or structurally pointless. In some cases, flood control
projects were approved for areas where hazard maps clearly indicated that
flooding was not a primary threat, raising questions about whether these
projects were designed for public safety or political gain.
If Project NOAH had been fully institutionalized, mandated,
and funded, these anomalies would have been harder to conceal. Hydrological
models would have shown whether dredging was genuine or a fiction. Rainfall
projections would have been cross-referenced with drainage capacity claims.
Hazard maps would have exposed the absurdity of locating multimillion-peso
projects in zones that never needed them. Satellite imagery, operating under
NOAH’s framework, would have revealed discrepancies between contractual promises
and actual physical outcomes. Science would have become a witness, and
accountability would have been unavoidable.
The absence of NOAH in the official government apparatus
created a vacuum where corruption could flourish unnoticed. Procurement
documents overstated flood risks in areas where scientific data suggested
otherwise. Engineers justified projects that defied hydrological logic.
Contractors built without reference to hazard data. Oversight agencies lacked
the scientific backbone to audit infrastructure claims. And the people —
ordinary Filipinos living in flood-prone barangays — paid the ultimate price.
It is wrenching to imagine how many of today’s scandals could have been
prevented had Project NOAH been standing at the center of decision-making,
demanding truth through data, challenging falsehoods through simulations,
ensuring transparency through open-access maps. The scandal does not only
reflect moral failure; it reflects a profound rejection of science.
Yet the tragedy does not end there. Project NOAH could have
strengthened anti-corruption monitoring and also enhanced the nation’s fight
against organized crime. Many coastal zones vulnerable to storm surges —
carefully mapped by NOAH — are the same corridors exploited by smuggling
syndicates. Integrating NOAH’s geospatial and environmental intelligence with
Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) operations could have revolutionized predictive patrolling and tightened
maritime surveillance. The same visibility that prevents flood disasters could
prevent economic sabotage. The same models used to warn residents of rising
waters could guide security forces in anticipating smuggling routes shaped by
tidal shifts, river flow, and terrain. And at the level of LGUs, this
interdisciplinary approach could have been transformative: a mayor reading
rainfall projections would also be reading risk maps for criminal activity,
turning science into both shield and strategy.
But instead of embracing this powerful convergence of
science, security, and governance, Project NOAH was allowed to drift into
semi-obscurity. It floats now in the care of UP, respected by scholars but
underutilized by the state. And as storms grow stronger, as corruption grows
bolder, as criminal networks grow more sophisticated, the absence of a national
commitment to NOAH becomes a wound that bleeds with every flooded street, every
ruined livelihood, every scandal that steals money meant to keep families safe.
As I placed the old children’s book gently back on my desk,
I could not shake the image of Noah standing before the rising storm, hammer in
hand, building something not for glory but for survival. Noah built the ark
before the rain came. We, on the other hand, dismantled our ark while the sky
was already darkening. We had the tools. We had the science. We had the
warnings. We had the chance to create a culture of preparedness. Yet we allowed
politics, indifference, and corruption to drown our best efforts.
And so the question that lingers — the question that echoes
from that fragile childhood book to the present reality of our nation — is
painfully simple: when the next great storm approaches, will our leaders
finally choose to build and protect the ark? Or will we once again wait for the
floodwaters to rise before realizing that the tragedy was never the storm, but
the silence and neglect of those who refused to prepare?
