Resilient, But Not All at Once

Hi, it's me again, Budz!

It's been almost three months since we went back to Marikina City. Sooorry it took me this long to give you an update ✌️✌️ I found myself going back and replaying the recordings of our conversations with the people there. Here's what's clear: everyone was affected, yes, but each one has a different story. The floods are getting lower, people are getting used to it, but the fear is still there. 

Whenever I got the chance, I always asked them: what does the word "resilient" mean to you? Almost everyone had an answer, as if it had been stamped into them that resilient means rising back up, that this is the definition of being resilient. As someone chronically online, I always see it in the news or in posts: Filipinos are resilient when it comes to disasters, they bounce back easily, and they even manage to laugh and joke around even when they are walking in the waist-deep flood (we actually talked to a few people with stories like this). They say they're used to it. But even if "bouncing back" is stamped on everyone, can we really say it applies to all? All at the same time?

And above all, why does "resilient"  to them seem to be tied only to "bouncing back" ?

Damage and Recovery

The UNDRR defines resilience as the ability of a system to recover or adapt from the damage of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner. Let's break that down. The "system" here could be a household, or the city as a whole, anything that was affected. The definition does mention "timely recovery,"  but the word "damage" is in there, too.

Because it wouldn't be true: you wouldn't need to recover if there was no damage in the first place. And I think that's the missing part from what I keep hearing. To put it: no flood simply means no damage, so no need to recover. But it's pretty hard for Marikina City to be flood-free, being a valley sitting at the foot of the mountains (the people there are well aware of this, too). Maybe that's why "bouncing back" is the first thing on their mind when they talk about being resilient, because they are always flooded, and they always need to recover. 

People in Marikina City still have a clear memory of their experiences during the past flood events: how high was the flood level? Where did they get/buy their food/necessity after the flood? Who helped them? Etc.

In my study, I want to measure resilience at the household level. Quantitatively, I proved that recovery really does vary, as damage also varies. Two households may had same floodwater level, yet some suffered much worse damage than the other. Some had nearly the same damage, but one recovered right away. The reason? The flood alone can't explain it, and the condition of the affected household matters just as much. Every household's situation is different, and this is exactly why resilience is not equal — it's a spectrum. As they say, there's no choice but to "bounce back," life goes on, but that "bouncing back" still doesn't happen at the same pace for everyone.

The Household and the City

After Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, quite a lot of flood control investments were made in Marikina City as part of its resilience strategy to "minimize damage", and it's true, flood levels have been going down. There's also been a shift in disaster management, from being "reactive" back then to "preventive" now. There's a clearer post-flood operation strategy: which parts of the City need fixing, assistance for evacuees, and so on. You could say the City is also getting faster at recovering or returning to normal operations. But if you zoom in to the household level, the extent of damage and the speed of recovery still really vary. Perhaps that's why there is a separation of the household and city-scale in the system definition because their resilience levels really are different. The City may have already recovered in terms of its operation, but still, within the City, there are struggling households.

Head of the Marikina City Engineering Office elaborating to us the changes in the flood control measures in the City.

Barangay Captain of Nangka explaining to us their post-flood operations

River flood level monitoring gauge in Sto. Nino Bridge Marikina

One more thing I noticed: the help the City can give is really limited, which is why they're very open to assistance from NGOs or private entities. Among the community leaders we talked to, the phrase "kanya-kanya"   (every household for itself) kept coming up whenever I asked what help they could give for repairing individually damaged houses. Some assistance does get given, but only to those who really, really need it most, and they simply can't cover everyone. As some of the community leaders themselves told us, they were flooded too; they had their own damage to deal with, so it really was every household for itself, and everyone understood that.

This is where it hit me: maybe the measure of being resilient isn't really only during the disaster event itself, but a product of the household's condition, shaped by the available opportunities to them to rise from their own socio-economic struggle. It's multidimensional, which is exactly why it's so hard to quantify.

Imagine this street in Nangka is flooded up to 2nd floor of these houses during Ondoy (2009).

Now and the Future

In the span of 15 years (between Typhoon Ondoy in 2009 and Karina in 2024), so much has changed in how Marikina City handles floods. And it changed fast. I don't know if the coming years will move at the same speed.

I'm writing this blog while calibrating a flood model, still have so many questions. Yes, we can model flood extent (we have data for validating this), flood damage and recovery (possible, but there's so much to consider), but when it comes to the future, "what changes could actually happen?" it's really thought-provoking.  The City has plans, but even to them, they know the future is uncertain, and that's what we need to prepare for.

We conducted a Focus Group Discussion with key officials of Marikina City to understand their past experiences and future plans to achieve flood resiliency.

We follow the XLRM framework for Robust Decision-Making workshop for Flood Risk Management. This activity was supported by the HyDEPP SATREPS Project and the Toyota Foundation. Big THANKS to them!

They, themselves, are aware of the uncertainties in the future. 

Anyway, after our fieldwork, I got a few days back in my home province, Catanduanes (another typhoon-prone part of the Philippines). Here's a video of the sunrise, looking out over the Pacific Ocean. 

When Data Meets Humanity: Lessons from Qualitative Fieldwork

Hi everyone. It’s Leon. This opportunity, I would like to share my perceptive of qualitative study I did back in the Philippines months before.. and hope that it could promote the work in your future endeavor. 

As a student in civil engineering, most of my work existed inside datasets, models, and statistical outputs. Flood depth became numbers in spreadsheets. Recovery became indicators and variables. Entire communities were transformed into rows of data that could be analyzed, compared, and visualized.

Although quantiative study is important to reach a big generability of the conclusion, qualitaitve study seem to be undermined, despite its position is as important.

This trip reminded me why fieldwork matters. Not because qualitative research replaces quantitative methods, but because it restores the human dimension that numbers alone can flatten.

It was a reminder that behind every dataset are real people navigating uncertainty, difficult decisions, and unequal realities during repeating disaster such as floods.

The purposes of the third trip

This time, I returned to the Philippines as a researcher trying to understand how people recover after floods – and why some recover faster than others. I conducted interviews and focus group discussions in flood-prone communities, listening to stories about rebuilding homes, borrowing money, protecting families, and preparing for the next disaster even before fully recovering from the previous one.

Sometimes, while listening to participants describe repeated flooding, I realized how easy it is to discuss “recovery” in academic papers without fully grasping what recovery actually feels like in everyday life post-disaster.

Beyond rebuilding walls or replacing furniture. For vulnerable people, 

Recovery is anxiety whenever heavy rain starts at night.

Recovery is parents pretending to stay calm for their children.

Rcovery is sharing a loaf of bread for four member of family after disaster.

Recovery is deciding whether limited money should go toward repairing a house, or buying food.

Recovery is exhaustion…..

Limits of Numbers

Quantitative research remains extremely important in my work. Without it, we cannot identify large-scale patterns or measure inequality systematically. And the conclusion sounds weak.. to be accepted for public..

But during my further progress of my research, I felt that these numbers only tell part of the story.

Without placing myself back to the communities, I could not get the complete stories, and things from a literature will simply be an asumption.

Before the field survey, I convinced myself and was so sure that the reason the rich recover faster is due to selling/ liquidify their asset. 

Turns out it was just a small part of the mecanishm, and which it come to realisation after the field survey.

Communities, relatives, relation in Phillipines is strong and supportive, but again, the type of help and donnation was diverged depending on the social strata. For the rich who experienced disater, it is more likely for them to received better type of help to even cash.

Some participants spoke about loans and borrowing, which is the priviledge of the rich.

For rich family, loans is investment opportunities, hoping to maintain their business with the hope of higher return.

For poorest families, loans were not opportunities. They were last resorts. They borrowed money not because they wanted financial leverage or investment opportunities, but because they had run out of options.

That difference matters.

And it is difficult to fully understand through numerical analysis alone.

Liquidify asset was also mentioned during the field. The rich has more than one car, and in the difficult time, they sold one of them. For the poor, there is nothing they could sell.

The numbers in my quantitative study would have not reflect people emotion.

Some participants laughed while telling difficult stories. Like when a woman describe how they was like a zombie running towards food truck post-disaster.

Or how a woman forced to smile with glassy eyes when she recalled how she worried so much about her sicked father alone at home when the water rise so fast.

Why Quantitative Research Still Matters

In an era increasingly dominated by big data, machine learning, and predictive modeling, qualitative research can sometimes appear less visible or less valued.

But after this trip, I believe even more strongly that qualitative research remains essential.

Because human experiences are messy.

Qualitative research allows us to listen to those dimensions directly.

It helps explain the stories hidden behind statistical patterns.

And sometimes, it reminds researchers themselves why their work matters in the first place.

When I returned from the Philippines, I brought back interview recordings, field notes, and research data. But I also brought a new insight how important qualitative study with quantitative study.

A reminder that behind every graph, regression model, or recovery indicator are people trying their best to rebuild lives under conditions that are often unequal long before disasters even occur.

This trip reminded me that as civil engineer with word “civil” on it, it should not only aim to measure reality.

It should also try to understand social aspect in it.

And most of the time, understanding begins not with numbers, or complex equation or model, but with sitting across from someone and listening to their story!

Finally, here is some of the picture I took during the meeting preparation, surveys, focus group discussion! Thanks for all the support from the University of Philippines, JICA, Kawasaki Sensei, Budz, and Toyota Foundation to make this process so meaningful.