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4.01.01 The Use of GIS in

the Municipality of Laurel

Laurel is a 4th class municipality

bounded on the north by the bustling city ofTagaytay, and has Taal Lake on its eastside. It has a population of about 31,000(2004) distributed in 16 rural and 5 urbanbarangays and occupying about 7,129hectares of fertile soil in the Province ofBatangas. Agricultural and fishery productionare the leading sources of income for themajority of its residents. The propagation oftilapia fingerlings in ponds has beenconsidered as best alternative to agriculturalcrop production due to its bigger demand

from the fish cage operators in Taal Lake.The road from Manila going to Laurel is linedwith residential homes, subdivisions andsmall resorts, however, the municipality isproud of having its physical developmentsbased on the carrying capacity principle ofthe area.

Laurel started to use GIS in its planningactivities in 2002, after the Planning andCoordination Office was involved in a trainingprogram conducted by NAMRIA. It

represents the majority of Philippine LGUs inits rural profile with very limited economicalresources, which are the main target usersfor the GIS Cookbook.

During the period when HLURB assisted theLGU in developing its GIS the Mayor,Honorable John Benedict P. Panganiban,was a first term Local Chief Executive. He isa young law graduate, and he got his politicaltraining from his father who was the previousMayor of the municipality. Mayor Panganiban

also relied on the technical expertise of theMunicipal Planning and DevelopmentCoordinator, (MPDC), Engr. Ciriaco BCalinisan. The Mayor has little backgroundin GIS but he is familiar with maps and otherinformation products, which originate fromthe GIS, such as, the Brief Profile of Laurel,

which has utilized data from the GIS, and theavailable Municipal Base Maps which aredisplayed on the walls of the Barangay Hallsfor easy reference.

The municipal councilors and LGU seniormanagement have attended in February2006, a Workshop to prepare an Executive-Legislative Agenda for Local Governanceand Development, which is a PolicyStatement and Business Plan for thestrategic development of Laurel. This activity

is promoted by Department of Interior andLocal Government, and it facilitates thepreparatory steps for the formulation of theCLUP Vision, Goals and Objectives of themunicipality.

The major challenges which the Mayorreports the LGU has to contend with are:

Improvement of road conditions;Generation of jobs for the more than30% of working age groups that are

unemployed;Curbing the excessive proliferation offish cages in Lake Taal;Advocating for the introduction oftelephone landlines for cheapercommunication fees and access toInternet.

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On the other hand the municipality

Has no informal settlements;Has adequate school and healthfacilities;

Has no illegal dumpsite because ithas a significant recycling program.

MPDC Calinisan returned from an overseasjob in Saudi Arabia in 1988, and while waitingfor another assignment abroad, he wasapproached by the Vice Mayor who askedhim to take up the position as the MPDC ona temporary basis. At that time, there waslittle in terms of planning activities in themunicipality, and there was just an out-of-scale and outdated municipal map on theoffice wall. Being a native of Laurel andwanting to help the Mayor, he accepted thejob, and stayed on since then. The firstCLUP, which was approved in 1995, tooktwo years to prepare, with the assistance ofthe HLURB Regional Staff, since there wasno MPDO staff then. The revision of theCLUP was done in 2001 with the UP Schoolof Urban and Regional Planning (SURP)assisting them as a project of its students Atthe same time Laurel was included in a GIS

training program implemented by NAMRIA.As a result, GIS was used in the CLUPrevision.

In 2006, it has been decided to update theCLUP, and the next revision will be done withthe use of the new HLURB Guidelinesincluding the GIS Cookbook.

The MPDC is assisted by two staff assistantsnamely:

One clerk (Planning Officer 1) whohas training in GIS;

One statistician (Planning Officer 2).

Another staff person, who was previouslyworking with the MPDC but is now with theEngineering Office, also received GIStraining.

MPDC Calinisan reports that the situation inhis office of having limited staff resources isthe same in the majority of LGUs throughoutthe country. He considers GIS to be a veryuseful tool not only for land use planning but

also for other sector offices in the LGU, withwhom he has encouraged data sharing.Municipal Engineering Office is also usingGIS and some other Offices, like theEducation District Office, have showninterest. The limited provision of computershas so far constrained the introduction ofdata sharing.

Provision of computer support is difficult forLaurel. Computer hardware has to beprocured in Manila and there is very little

competence in computer maintenance andrepair in the municipality.

Plotting of large scale maps derived from theGIS is not possible to do in Laurel. It cannotafford its have its own plotter and there is nourgent and continuous need for it. Instead,the MPDC occasionally goes to NAMRIA inFort Bonifacio where he can be assisted.

Mrs. Geraldine Canta is a Planning Officer ofthe MPDO who knows how to master basic

operations in a GIS and is able to update andexpand the municipal databases. She isassisted by a Statistician, who frequentlyuses the GPS to track the continuous needfor spatial data information. The softwarebeing used for the GIS include Excel for theattribute data and ArcView 3 for the geodata.

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Ms. Canta realizes that projections areconfusing in the GIS and the text in thesoftware help function is difficult tounderstand. She confirms that there is hardlyany help is found in Laurel when there is a

problem with the hardware.

It is also reported that the other offices in theLGU are getting interested in using the GISbut the expensive software is a constraint forthese municipal units to use the technology.As for now she helps the other offices printmaps and other information products fromthe GIS.