Community-Based Flood Early Warning: Lessons from Five Years of Barangay Partnerships

Dr. Maria Santos, Andrea Villanueva

Abstract

Between 2021 and 2026 the Disaster Informatics Lab co-designed flood early-warning tools with eleven riverside barangays. This paper reports what made the systems last: local ownership of sensors, alert wording tested with residents, and redundancy over sophistication. We find that alert trust, not technical accuracy, best predicted evacuation compliance.