As a low-lying area bordered by three interconnecting rivers, Valenzuela City is one of the most flood-prone cities in the Philippines. Every year, flood damage reaches up to P3.9 billion pesos. During periods of heavy rainfall, stagnant water from floods can sometimes stay in the area for up to 4 weeks. During Typhoon Ondoy, 97% of barangays in Valenzuela were classified as severely flooded.

The Valenzuela City Disaster Risk and Reduction Management Council is only comprised of 55 people, not nearly enough to tend to a city of more than 620,000 citizens.

The need for this project is to be able to create several safe and sound structures that would be easy to reproduce and deploy to areas of concern.

To help more long-suffering Valenzuela citizens, we had to keep costs down as much as possible so that we can create more structures and cover more ground.

When the rains come, rescue equipment are too few and too far away. If only they were readily available, several lives would have been saved.

The objective of Project SAVE (Signage and Adspace Versatile for Emergencies) is to design media spaces in such a way that they are dual purpose - for advertising and for first response / rescue.

The structures can be converted into boats, rafts, and spine boards by citizens themselves within a matter of seconds, even without the supervision of trained responders. As they are deployed in recognizable outdoor media spaces, they can be ubiquitous across the city, reaching even the narrowest alleys.

As long as there is a SAVE device nearby, there is a much greater chance to save lives.

Valenzuela City served as our pilot, a middle class urban city in the capital of the Philippines. Though our client is the city government of Valenzuela, our end users are the Valenzuela citizens. By now, they’re sick and tired of the constant flooding. Worse, most of them have lost loved ones along the way because of it.

Media was highly instrumental in developing Project SAVE. Lamp post banners, store/shed signages, community billboards and similar structures are scattered all over the city. The Valenzuela citizens are very familiar with them, and this is helpful to us since we wanted them to easily recognize the SAVE devices, and just as easily, access them.

The solution that they’ve been clamoring for is now being positioned all around them, one media space at a time.

We started in Valenzuela City’s busiest and most important thoroughfare, MacArthur Highway. It passes over the Tullahan River, which has overflowed several times in the past. It was selected as starting point for two reasons. One, it has the heaviest traffic volume in the whole city. Two, this particular highway has, unfortunately, witnessed multiple mortalities due to flooding.

Development started Q4 of 2016. Working with disaster prevention experts, first responders, and Valenzuela citizens, we designed, built, tested, and installed all the SAVE devices, with the first batch deployed by late February 2019.

The executional idea is also the media idea. To introduce the multifunction of the SAVE devices, the tarps covering them bore the message “this is a SAVE device” and a quick guide how to access and use it.

A Project SAVE website was also created to aid people and to house all updates regarding new SAVE device locations.

Once the SAVE devices were in place, attention from all sectors soon followed.

Almost 300,000 eyeballs spot our signs daily.

Major fastfood and beverage brands have expressed interest to sponsor SAVE devices, bearing their brand messages. This can serve as a new revenue stream (to finance the construction of more SAVE structures).

Tech giants Google Philippines and Facebook Philippines form part of a chorus that have been singing praises for the project.

Four cities have already initiated negotiations to have their own Project SAVE devices.

Most importantly, there has been zero flooding casualties since the SAVE devices went up; and we want to keep it that way, thus the drive to keep developing and installing SAVE devices not just all over Valenzuela City, but across the entire nation.