Geographic information systems in the Philippines
- Article
- GIS
A geographic information system (GIS) is software and data that tie a map to a table. Every feature on the map, a road, a barangay boundary, a rain gauge, carries a row of attributes, so a question about the table can be answered on the map and a question about the map can be answered from the table. The idea grew out of computer cartography around 1960. In the Philippines, the Philippine GIS Society was established in 1993.
UP Data Science Society published this explainer on May 3, 2024 together with SEDS PH and ASTI-ALaM as part of SciEyes, a two-day workshop on data from satellites and other remote sensors held on May 18, 2024 at the UP Diliman School of Statistics Lecture Hall and on May 25, 2024 at the UP Diliman Institute of Mathematics Room MB 118. The material below is drawn from a student paper on Iskomunidad, the UP Diliman wiki.
Five components
The paper breaks a GIS into five parts. People maintain the database, provide technical support, and make decisions with the output; they range from viewers who browse maps, to general users who run the business side, to specialists who keep the system running. Data is usually the most expensive part, because collecting and maintaining geographic data takes time and any error shows up later as a wrong conclusion. Hardware is the computers, scanners, digitizers, GPS units, and printers. Software stores, manages, analyzes, and outputs the data; modern packages keep the graphical and descriptive data in one database using an object-relational model. Procedures are the agreed steps for how data is retrieved, entered, stored, transformed, analyzed, and presented.
Providers in the Philippines
The paper names several local providers. GeoData Solutions Inc. and the Region 8 GIS Network focus on data acquisition, processing, and analysis. The Region 8 GIS Network was created in 2001 to improve data access, cooperation, and standardization among its member institutions, with an emphasis on training people, managing information, and supporting research. GIS Tailor-Made Inc. digitizes paper maps and builds spatial datasets. Logica offers consultancy, custom applications, and Geo-ICT work across sectors, especially public safety.
Where GIS is used
The explainer lists the usual applications: delivery routing and traffic analysis in logistics, precision farming and soil monitoring in agriculture, land use and environmental impact assessment in urban planning, site selection and market analysis in real estate, mapping vulnerable areas and evacuation routes in disaster management, tracking habitats and human impact in conservation, tracking outbreaks and planning emergency services in public health, and locating customers in marketing.
Challenges
Four points close the series: low awareness of what GIS can do, limited access to data and technology, the need for training, and room for collaboration between the groups that already hold spatial data.
Source: GIS in the Philippines, student paper on Iskomunidad, UP Diliman