Philippines Smart Cities Development Study

Philippines committed to accomplishing smart city projects: Command Center Upgrade and E-government Services in City of Manila; Bus Rapid Transit System and Digital Traffic System in Cebu City; Converged Command and Control Center and Intelligent Transportation Traffic Systems with Security in Davao City. According to study by Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) while country begun path toward building smart cities issues such as operational costs lack of interoperability among biggest challenges. LGUs need to set up necessary ICT infrastructure systems needed operate smart city initiatives while majority of LGUs have existing basic ICT infrastructure ensuring continuous upgrade of systems to match rapid growth of technology industry can be very costly. Cities of future greatly different from today. Fast-paced development of technologies including IoT AI blockchain rapidly changed way we live. According to UN digital technologies advanced more rapidly than any innovation in history reaching around 50% of developing world’s population in only two decades transforming societies. Amid high-speed development term smart city coined to describe use of ICT innovation to improve urban environment. Developing smart cities not only means having latest disruptive technology but ensuring use of ICT lead to improved quality of life greater prosperity sustainability engaged empowered citizens. BCDA lined up several high-impact projects programs in New Clark City particularly in fields of sustainable development renewable energy ICT estate management transportation tourism smart city technologies. Hope these programs can be replicated in other cities in country. While may take time before urban centers become fully smart cities transformation must already begin now in order keep up in fast-paced world