SENATOR Edgardo Angara yesterday pushed for the immediate modernization of the disaster monitoring and management system.

He made the call amid a study made by the Climate Change Vulnerability Index  that placed the Philippines 10th among countries in “extreme risk” of climate change.

Angara noted that collated by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, the CCVI 2012 also describes Manila as “extremely vulnerable” to climate-change driven floods and typhoons, noting a combination of exposure to hazards, poor socio-economic factors and a slow capacity to adapt.

“The report highlights that we should expand our infrastructure and civic amenities fast enough to cope with population growth," he said.

"But we should also get the brightest minds thinking about this problem for us, and equip them with the necessary tools," added Angara, chairman of the congressional Commission on Science and Technology.

He urged concerned agencies to look at the experience of Thailand and their response to widespread flooding that has already affected over 10 million people in Bangkok and other parts of the country.

He said that Thailand’s Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency and the Ministry of Science and Technology recently partnered to form a Geo-Informatics Operation System and Satellite Data Centre as a venue for concerned government authorities to utilize remote sensing technologies in decision-making for disaster management.

“Our Thai neighbors had the initiative to collaborate and deploy the necessary S&T in the midst of such devastating floods. Let’s not wait for another typhoon to hit our shores before we expedite our current efforts to modernize our disaster management systems,” said Angara.

COMSTE recently proposed the formation of an innovation cluster—a three-way partnership among government, the academe and industry—as a venue for deploying advanced S&T like satellite imaging and ICT to improve the country’s capacity for disaster management.

Angara asked that P60 million be allocated from the 2012 budget for the formation of such a cluster. The amount falls under Angara’s proposal for P300 million in research and development spending.

The funds will be sourced from the budget allocations of the Commission on Higher Education, the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technologies Research and Development, and the Information and Communications Technology Office.