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Baguio: The smart city

Julia Hernandez
Nov 14, 2020
2 min read

The world is changing, and we, humans, are constantly evolving, adapting and innovating. Our country is not exempted from that change, and that is exactly what Baguio City’s “Smart City” aims to do.

Essentially, a smart city is a city that uses technology to improve and provide the city's services. This allows for maximum efficiency, sustainability, convenience, higher economic quality, and citizen welfare. Furthermore, Baguio’s smart city managed by Karrie Ilagan creates a city that is designed for efficiency and realizes a visionary’s world.

Baguio is known to be the “city of pines” with a mission to “create a sustainable and enabling environment that will promote economic stability and ensure the general well-being of our citizenry.” This agenda is pursued with Baguio’s smart city, for it offers the ability to gather data and manage resources, assets, and services. Additionally, they can provide faster, cheaper, and better services. But how?

INNOVATION. In photo: Honorable Benjamin Magalong of Baguio City pens partnership with Cisco Philippines’ Managing Director, Karrie Ilagan. © Thor

The city has what is called an ‘Integrated Command and Control Center’ that monitors and coordinates with city officials and citizens through multiple apps, tools and sensors. The computer application lets the administration's plan to build the first smart city in the country. A few installations were made, namely a video management system with video analytics, a geographical information system, and a computer-aided dispatch and integrated communication platform. These installations make it so that the citizens can immediately file, send, or show complaints like broken street lights in just a few clicks which makes managing and responding to said complaints be done faster than most cities in the Philippines.

“I am confident that Cisco’s participation will help the city realize its goal of digital governance where residents can engage in ‘contactless’ transactions with the government and much more. Less ‘contacts’ will also help to decrease the spread of the COVID-19 infection,” says Mayor Magalong. They are the test site and leading initiative in the Philippines, inspired by “Project Airgig” that has been in testing since 2018. All these are made to contribute to peace and order, disaster risk reduction management, and anti-criminality.

Baguio’s steps in this project pave a way for other cities and even countries to follow in their footsteps. “We are excited about the work we are doing with Baguio City and we hope that more cities will take that bold step towards building an inclusive future for the Filipino,” says Ilagan. Having more cost-effective and more efficient fixes with the help of technology is a bold step taken by Baguio, and these are steps they will continue to take for a better, more modern Philippines.