By Juzel L. Danganan
MANILA, July 28 (PNA) — The Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards’s (NOAH’s) Dream Lidar project will pinpoint flood prone areas, saving many lives in turn, said President Benigno Aquino III in his 5th State of the Nation Address (SONA) delivered Monday before the joint session of Congress at the Batasan in Quezon City.
”Through the Dream Lidar project, under project NOAH, we can easily pinpoint the flood prone areas; we have mapped 19 out of the 20 river systems, to pinpoint which areas will be quickly affected by heavy rainfall,” the President said.
Aquino added that the early warnings, coming from the accurate projection’s of NOAH, passed on to the Local Government Units (LGUs) is vital to evacuation efforts.
Moreover, he said that the effective forecasting combined with efficient LGUs will lead to more lives saved.
”We empowered LGUS, that are frontliners when there is flooding, through the modern and widespread forecasting,” Aquino said.
The president cited the recent example of the province of Albay; although devastated by typhoon “Glenda,” there was no recorded human casualty.
Aquino praised Albay Governor Joey Salceda in the process.
Project NOAH is the early warning apparatus created by the Philippine Atmospherical Geophysical and Astronomic Services Administration (PAG-ASA); operational since 2012, to make public dissemination of weather system updates through its website.
The software features projection of weather conditions by four hours earlier, including hazard maps and Doppler radars.
It was assessed that it is 80 percent accurate by the International Business Machines (IBM). (PNA)