Building Nets: Participatory Approaches to Community Resilience “When fishermen cannot go to sea, they repair nets.” This proverb reveals the wisdom of fishermen in discerning the right action in every season. But technically speaking, it also offers a glimpse into grassroots communities’ deep knowledge of their environment, including the weather and climate within it. Recent years have seen a drastic increase in the frequency and intensity of disasters in the Philippines. According to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, above-normal rainfall through much of 2025 caused widespread flooding across the country. Among the strongest typhoons to hit the Philippines was Uwan, affecting 7.9 million and displacing 1.2 million people. As we face these mounting climate challenges, we need to be more strategic in crafting solutions. Modern technology has gradually allowed us to do that. But one factor we should never leave behind is the community itself—those most affected by the gravity of the situation, but who also hold the wisdom to navigate how it can be addressed. A case study by the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) makes this case clear. In a study aimed at facilitating local communities in taking an active role to craft their own local disaster risk reduction and management plans, Martinez, et al. (2025) examined the implementation of the Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan (BDRRMP) to Barangay Tatalon, Quezon City, a flood-prone, densely populated area where community preparedness for calamities remains insufficient. The key findings of the study underscore the importance of involving local residents in DRRM. Particularly, the lived experience of the community allows them to identify hazards, improve preparedness, and recommend solutions. In addition, they already maintain informal mechanisms for preparing and mobilizing community members; formalizing these networks can strengthen effectiveness, integrate grassroots voices, and build local leadership. Hence, participatory approaches make DRRM more inclusive of diverse perspectives, which in turn strengthens a community’s collective capacity to address disaster risk. The case of Barangay Tatalon is not an isolated one, rather, a situation that can be proven in a different context using modern technology, specifically machine learning. Using community data gathered from a Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) covering over 14,000 households, along with participatory rural appraisal sessions involving over 200 residents, Onsay and Rabajante (2024) trained a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier for the municipality of Goa, Camarines Sur, to predict whether a household is “prepared” or “unprepared” for disaster risk. The model achieved 91.55% accuracy under random testing and 94.53% accuracy through an optimized pipeline, and can be replicated by other LGUs using their own CBMS data. Here, technology was used to build a climate-responsive tool grounded in the perspectives and lived experience of local residents. This reflects a broader insight from the UP CIDS case study (Martinez et al., 2025): research relies on community participation just as much as it benefits the community it studies. Initiatives like this already exist across the country. One example is the impact-based flood forecasting system developed by the UP Resilience Institute, the National Operational Assessment of Hazards (NOAH) Center, and Gerry Bagtasa of the Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology—built on the understanding that community engagement is central to disaster resilience. By providing easily accessible flood forecasts up to a day in advance, validated using local knowledge and experience, the system encourages sustained community involvement. Access here: https://noah.up.edu.ph/ Systems like this serve not only as mechanisms for disaster resilience but also as platforms for community participation—”building nets,” and ensuring adaptability no matter the weather.