National Conference on CBMS - PEP-NET

Proportion of households withaccess to sanitary toilet facilities

National Conference on CBMS

September 23-24, 2004Dusit Hotel NikkoMakati City, Philippines

Session 3CBMS Data Collection and Processing

Techniques

CBMS-GIS and GlobalCBMS-GIS and GlobalPositioning SystemPositioning System

By Mr. Bimbo DoriaMunicipal Planning and Development Coordinator

Sta. Elena, Camarines Norte

This conference is organized by the CBMS Network Coordinating Team of the Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studieswith the aid of a grant from International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada.

CBMS-GIS and Global Positioning System – The Santa Elena Experience

By BIMBO P. DORIA

Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator

A GLIMPSE OF THE MUNICIPALITY

The municipality of Santa Elena lies at the frontier of the Bicol Region aptly dubbed as the Gateway to Bicolandia. It is situated on the northernmost part of the Bicol Peninsula adjacent to the province of Quezon. West of the municipality is the Basiad Bay of the Pacific Ocean. The town proper (Poblacion) is 263 kilometers from Metro Manila.

The town is relatively young created in June 21, 1969 (35 years) by virtue of

Republic Act 5480. Initially the municipality has 10 barangays, but recent developments led to the inclusion of an additional 9 barangays taken out from the nearby town of Calauag, Quezon involving a Provincial boundary dispute wherein the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Santa Elena.

Santa Elena is a Fourth class municipality created eleventh of the twelve

municipalities in the province of Camarines Norte. It has a population of 38,000 covering the nineteen barangays.

The town’s topography is characterized by rolling hills to rugged terrain

characterized by fertile plains and small valleys rolling down the Pacific Ocean where 11 coastal barangays are its periphery. The main agricultural industries are Coconut and fishing. THE CBMS EXPERIENCE

A. CBMS Opportunity The Municipal Planning Development Office being at the forefront of socio-

economic planning activity has always been a challenged to come up with development programs, projects and activities that will effectively benefit the locality. A usual problem not only in Santa Elena is the financial constraints of a fourth class municipality such as ours in pursuing all major development projects. It is but necessary that we have to make do with our resources most of the time. Even if our office staff which is usually less than a number of our fingers in one hand needs to work with other sectors to maximize our output.

Most if not all planning activities mainly rely on data gathered in all aspects of the municipality. The more comprehensive is the data the better. The validity or reliability of gathered data serves as basis for a well prepared development plan. I

have mentioned that 9 out the 19 barangays in our municipality was only recently included. That situation only heightened the data gap wherein data from the said barangays were hardly made available due largely to some political reasons. We first had the opportunity to work with MIMAP on Community Based Monitoring System (CBMS) in March of 2003 which we really need for three reasons. One is to establish a database (in our case a social sector database) which we found to be suited to our needs at this point and comprehensive enough to be expandable to other sectors. Second is it has a GIS or Geographic Information System component which is more readily appreciated by our decision makers (the Mayor and the Sangguniang Bayan) with its digitized map feature. Database with GIS feature offered today in the market for a fourth class municipality such as ours is priced at more than a million pesos (Php 1,000,000.00). The financial constraint component is the third reason for us to take the opportunity to try the CBMS program. B. Data Collection

We conducted the Training Workshop on Data collection in May of 2003 completing the data collection by the end of August of the same year. We utilized more than fifty (50) enumerators coming from the ranks of barangay workers and officials picked by the barangay captains with minimal incentive. Minor problems were encountered with the data collection.

While most of the data collection phase was achieved, the data processing seminar was conducted in June, 10 2003. An orientation in computer data processing was included in the said seminar as well as introduction to GIS software of CBMS. Our computers at that time were unable to process said data due to specification needs (memory) of the software. With this technical problem identified, we procured a computer from savings from capital outlays which was capable enough to process the database and the mapping component.

The data encoding for the CBMS database was completed in April of 2004 with

7521 households data encoded. We could have achieved it earlier but we were able to utilize only two encoders with two computers. Said encoders and computers were not exclusively utilized for the program but other office work as well.

C. Spot Maps

The enumerators were also tasked in the preparation of their barangay Spot Map. It is their common knowledge of the barangay with respect to the households, location of infrastructure facilities such as roads and buildings, and more particularly the knowledge of where the subdivision of the barangay into smaller puroks. It is in this tasked of mapping that the enumerators had difficulty largely due to lack of adequate skills in mapping. They sought assistance from other knowledgeable persons in the barangay in the preparation of the spot map.

Most of the submitted maps needed to be redrawn and validated since the preparation of said maps focused more on the features (household, facilities, roads, rivers). Most of the spot maps are not similar to the barangay maps released from the Bureau of Lands and most features are sparsely scattered. D. Geographic Information System

Local Government Units (LGUs) make decisions that involve land or geographically related issues ranging from land development to environmental health, peace and order or basic service delivery. For LGUs Geographic Information System is a technology that combines geographic data ( the locations of man-made and natural features on earth like houses, streets, rivers) and information (like names, addresses, classification, coordinates) to generate maps for visualization and analysis. In the advent of continuous development in information technology Geographic Information System visualizes maps, in this case digitized maps with references utilizing global coordinates. Data in database are more emphasized in digitized map presentation and by experience readily appreciated and probably understood by decision makers and layman as well.

With the CBMS Program utilizing the Natural Resource Database software

(mapping software) the important thing is to create a map of an area in our case municipality which is reliably aligned with the global coordinates. Those coordinates are shown in the lower portion of the screen which changes as we move the computer mouse.

As experienced there was no available digitized map in our locality so we had to

create one. With the CBMS Program utilizing the Natural Resource Database software (mapping software) the challenge is to create a map of an area in our case municipality which is reliably aligned with the global coordinates. Those coordinates are shown in the lower left portion of the window which changes as you move the computer mouse.

With limited orientation to this kind of software, experimentation in manipulating

our paper maps into digitized maps was the challenge on hand. We tried different methods and eventually had a respectable output utilizing a copying machine.

By photocopying a topographic map a coordinate or geo-reference can be

established on the duplicate. You can then manually draw the political boundaries on the duplicate using the barangay index maps as another reference. Do not forget to place 4 cross hairs with corresponding coordinates on the duplicate. Once completed, we then reduce the size of the map to fit a single page for scanning. Grid line are then drawn and distributed evenly which shall serve as reference for overlaying other features once the object has been digitized. It is advisable to clean or erase other unnecessary contour lines with utilizing software such as Paintbrush.

It is then a matter of some trials to digitized the municipal political map by an

overlaying it in the NRDB software. We fairly achieved the composition of the

digitized map using drawing grid as basis for manually adding features such as political boundary, roads and rivers.

E. Global Positioning System Global Positioning System as defined is a system for providing, worldwide,

velocity information and extremely accurate three dimensional positioning. It is a system of satellites and receiving devices used to compute positions on the earth. GPS is used in navigation and its precision supports cadastral surveying.

A coastal municipality as in our case has what is termed as municipal water or

territorial water. As such, we are mandated to protect said territory. In this regard a task force or deputized fish wardens created locally popularly called as Bantay Dagat who then is in charge of patrolling the municipal waters and apprehend illegal fishermen. In instances wherein illegal fishermen are caught it is needed to establish that the location of the illegal fishing is within the territorial water boundary of the municipality. We came across a tool that they utilize which is a GPS receiver unit (Global Positioning System) to assist the task force in establishing their location.

A GPS receiver is a digital equipment that reads the global coordinates in terms of

latitude and longitude where the unit is located using position readings of at least three satellites. Readings of more than three satellites has additional information on relative elevation. The GPS receiver unit we used has a positioning of probably better than 10 meters accuracy. This may vary with precision or sophistication depending on the unit available in the market. A standard GPS unit cost less than Fifteen Thousand Pesos (Php 15,000.00) depending on the brand and make.

With this in mind, we gathered GPS readings to establish monuments in the

municipality particularly roads intersecting the municipal boundary. In digitizing maps geo-referencing is used. This term comes from Geo-reference System, which is a coordinate system that locates points on the surface of the earth as reference to points on a map. Systems include latitude, longitude, Universal Transverse Mercutorial, etc. In utilizing GPS readings, we were able to improve the accuracy of our digitized map by comparing the coordinates of municipal boundaries crossing the national road and the map overlay which we did manually. By continuously compiling GPS reading of existing known monuments and roads by barangay we will be able to edit and correct our digitized map to include purok boundaries and households.

F. CBMS Status in Sta. Elena

The LGU has completed the computer data processing and validation of the said

output is ongoing. Currently CBMS database is being used as reference for ongoing programs such as Fifth Country Program for Children (CPCV) a Child Friendly

Movement. The municipality also uses the information database for development planning not only in the municipal level but as well as updating the Municipal Socio-Economic Profile.

The digitized map needs to be completed. Digitized mapping for three (3)

barangays have been completed. Mapping for household, roads and purok boundaries still to be digitized for the rest of the barangays.

There are plans to conduct a CBMS survey for the municipality of Sta. Elena if

materialized for CY 2005 to include other sectors particularly agriculture.

G. Concluding Remarks

The desire to assist the Local Government in development of the municipality needs to utilize the best available tool even with limited resources of government. Limited financial resources for man-power, equipment and capital outlay is but a challenge for us in government. We learn to maximize what is available and be imaginative in achieving our goals making use of opportunities such as CBMS program. Progressively we can use the acquired data, validate it from time to time thru people consultation, utilize it in projecting trends in development and optimize the utilization of resources in all levels to achieve heightened development in the municipality.

National Conference on CBMS - PEP-NET

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