Where water is under pressure — and what to build about it.
WISER Cities computes blue, green, and gray water footprints for every barangay and subbasin, flags hotspots against DENR standards, and ranks interventions to act on them. Balanga, Bataan is the first city on the system.
Blue water footprint
Water taken from rivers, groundwater, or the tap, and actually used up.
Green water footprint
Rainwater the soil holds, lost to evaporation and plant use before it reaches a river.
Gray water footprint
The clean water it would take to dilute wastewater pollution back to a safe level.
Flagged against real DENR Class C limits — e.g. 0.05 mg/L ammonia.
Enter data, compute, find hotspots, choose LID.
The same four steps every run follows, shown here with illustrative figures — not a live project.
- 1
Enter data
Topography, land use, river background, and HEC-HMS inputs go into a spreadsheet-style table, one row per barangay or subbasin.
Land use & water qualityBarangay Blue m³ Green m³ Gray m³ Poblacion 1,200 410 640 Tenejero 980 360 520 Cupang Proper 1,050 300 580 - 2
Compute
The engine runs the Water Footprint Assessment for every row at once and totals the blue, green, and gray results.
Run succeededBlue
3.2K m³
Green
1.1K m³
Gray
1.7K m³
- 3
Find hotspots
Results are checked against DENR Class C standards; the barangay or subbasin furthest over a limit is flagged first.
Citywide-highest ammonia factor - 4
Choose LID
Low Impact Development types are ranked by multi-criteria analysis against that hotspot's site conditions and governing pollutant.
Best fit · BioswaleA linear, vegetated drainage channel incorporating engineered soil media, subsurface aggregate layers, and underdrains.
Built on published methodology, not a black box.
Every figure the system produces traces back to one of these references.
Water Footprint Assessment Manual
Hoekstra, Chapagain, Aldaya & Mekonnen
Defines blue, green, and gray water footprint accounting — the method every run follows.
DENR DAO 2016-08 & DAO 2021-19
Department of Environment and Natural Resources
Sets the effluent and ambient water quality standards results are checked against.
HEC-HMS
US Army Corps of Engineers, Hydrologic Engineering Center
Supplies the hydrologic modeling inputs (flow, baseflow, evapotranspiration) per subbasin.
SCS Curve Number method
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
Estimates runoff from land cover and soil type for the gray water footprint.
Multi-criteria decision analysis
Site suitability, water resource efficiency, water quality improvement
Ranks Low Impact Development types against each flagged barangay's own conditions.
Water-wise Innovations and Strategies for Efficient Resource Management
Built by the Institute of Civil Engineering, University of the Philippines Diliman (April 2025–March 2027). Project Leader: Dr. Gil Cruz Jr.
Every city leaves a water footprint.