Smart City command center to improve services in Baguio

September 19, 2021 Metro BLISTT

BAGUIO CITY – The city government on Friday inaugurated the PHP200 million Smart City Command Center funded by the Office of the President (OP).
In his message read by Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Undersecretary Marlo Iringan during the launch, President Rodrigo Duterte congratulated the city for coming up with the innovation even amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.
“Transforming the city into data-driven and technologically –able during the time of emergency is worthy of recognition. Considering the many challenges that all local government units locally and globally are facing,” Duterte said.
He added that the project is “a critical step towards pushing and institutionalizing the innovation in the way we define good governance.”
“The future has arrived today,” he said. Mayor Benjamin Magalong, meanwhile, said the project will allow the city to respond to emergencies and improve the social and health system.
He said the command center uses state-of-the-art Cisco technology that will revolutionize how the city manages its critical assets, increase capacity to prevent and respond to emergencies and disasters, preserve the environment, speed up government services, improve social and health systems and protect lives and properties.
With the command center, Magalong said the city government will be able to govern efficiently by gathering data to be able to identify problems, analyze problems and solve problems.
Among key components of the project are an integrated command center, communication platform, a video management system with video, computer-aided dispatch, geographical information system, big data analytics, smart mobility, smart environment, smart governance, smart health system, smart traffic signalization, and smart Baguio people.
“Let me thank our President for providing us the funds to put up this smart city system. The assistance was personally delivered by Senator Bong Go,” Magalong said.
“The system allows us to gather data, dig data to be able to identify the problem, data to analyze, and data to solve the problem,” he said. Magalong earlier said the command center is equipped with high-resolution closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras capable of recognizing faces and things on the road.
He added that upcoming is the smart mobility project which the city will have with the help of the developer of the smart mobility project of Singapore which amounts to PHP1.6 billion. The city will also have the PHP892 million Information Communication Technology (ICT) Academy of the Philippines.
(PNA)