BIMWAM or the Building-up an Integrated Methodology for Water Resources Assessment and Management in Coastal Areas held its final project conference at the XU Little Theater last 12-13 July 2023. The event was attended by Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan President Fr Mars P Tan SJ, the Ambassador to the Philippines, Kingdom of Belgium Michel Parys and representatives from Medina Rural Waterworks and Sanitation Cooperative (MERWASCO), LGU Opol, and OPWA.

BIMWAM is a project spearheaded by Dr Vincent Hallet, the BIMWAM North Coordinator of the University of Namur in Belgium. With him were Professor Pascal Goderniaux from University of Mons in Belgium, and Professor Ignace Adant from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. The XU PhD BIMWAM researchers, led by BIMWAM South Coordinator Dr Guadalupe D Calalang, also graced the event.

In an interview by the Communications and Promotions Office on 14 July, Dr Hallet said the conference signals the end of the project though it is still not completed. “You should know that the end of the project is 31st of August, so it’s the end of the project. This project has been going on—going five enough years now—and so, the conference is the final conference of the project. But the project is not still completely finished because doing this project, we had two PhD researchers so they get a lot of information, they get a lot of experience, they get a lot of data, and they have still to finalize a PhD…The next step of the project is to finalize the PhD in Socioeconomics and the PhD in Hydrology.” 

Further, Dr Hallet and Professor Goderniaux discussed the significance of their project in Opol and Medina explaining that the goal of BIMWAM is to help these communities know their capacity and have better management of water resources. “The only way for the population to get water is to drill wells and to use groundwater—they don’t have surface water… That’s why we [chose] two different places of field work—Medina is volcanic, and Opol is sedimentary rocks. So it’s two different kind[s] of rocks.”

As Xavier Ateneo’s representative, Dr Calalang expressed pride in being part of this endeavor. 

“The project is something that we have to be proud of. We have our homegrown talent... hydrogeology is a rare profession in this region and we have our own faculty member, especially from the College of Agriculture, and who was once my student in the Bachelor of Agricultural Engineering program who is chosen and soon-to-be…as a Doctor in Hydrogeology.”

As BIMWAM culminates its project this August, Xavier Ateneo will continue to house the equipment to be used by future researchers.

Communications & Promotions Office