BLISTT receives updated landslide maps, monitoring toolbox
The local government units of Baguio City, La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan, Tuba and Tublay (BLISTT) received updated landslide maps and monitoring toolbox from two research projects funded by the Department of Science and Technology – Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD).
Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (LDRRMO) personnel from BLISTT received landslide susceptibility maps, vulnerability or risk maps, rainfall threshold, landslide sensors, monitoring systems and mobile applications on Thursday, July 12, 224.
Said maps were developed from the Modelling and Understanding Landslide Events (MULAT) in BLISTT program that analyzed rainfall threshold and its direct impact to landslide occurrences for the past 59 years.
The MULAT-BLISTT program was implemented by the University of the Philippines-Baguio (UPB) and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau-Cordillera Administrative Region (MGB-CAR) from July 2022 to July 2024.
At the same time, the University of the Cordilleras (UC) implemented the Cordillera Administrative landslide Monitoring Integrated Toolbox (CALaMI-T) research that developed a website and mobile application for real-time monitoring and landslide early warning system.
Dr. Dymphna Nolasco Javier, program leader of MULAT-BLISTT hopes that the local government units as beneficiaries of the research will utilize the high-resolution information on rainfall-induced landslides (RIL) maps in updating their DRRM plans towards disaster mitigation and resilience.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nathaniel Vincent Lubrica, project leader of CALaMI-T said the website and mobile application will be cascaded to the BLISTT LGUs in the coming months for testing and monitoring.
“Hopefully, the LGUs will see the importance of the technology and integrate this in their disaster and emergency operations,” he said.
He added that per MGB records, the Cordillera being a mountainous region is among the areas in the country prone to landslides often triggered by heavy rainfall. – JM Samidan
