Batangas Partners with De La Salle Lipa

Batangas, Philippines — In an effort to establish and operationalize the Province's integrated information management system (IIMS), a decision-support system for coastal and marine and river basin management, the Province of Batangas through the Provincial Government-Environment and Natural Resources (PG-ENRO) entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with De La Salle Lipa and PEMSEA in March 2014, coinciding with the Batangas Environment Summit (BEST) 2014. The signing of the MOA was graced by Hon. Vilma Santos-Recto, Governor of the Province of Batangas, Bro. Joaquin Martinez, President of De La Salle Lipa (DLSL) and Mr. Stephen Adrian Ross, Executive Director of PEMSEA. DLSL will host the IIMS by providing the necessary work station and staff to regularly update, operationalize and maintain the system. PGENRO on the other hand will be responsible in coordinating with the relevant national, provincial and municipal agencies for the provision of data to be encoded and consolidated into the provincial database. PEMSEA will provide the necessary technical support through the conduct of IIMS trainings on the establishment and query system, application and system trouble shooting. Following the signing of the MOA, the IIMS core team of DLSL was trained on the operations and applications of the IIMS. The IIMS Module 1 training on establishment and applications of IIMS was conducted on April 1-4, 2014. Representatives from other partner local academic institutions of the Province, including Batangas State University, Lyceum University of the Philippines and University of Batangas also attended the training. In May 2014, PG-ENRO turned over to DLSL initial sets of data for screening, classification and encoding. Data from 2008-2013 are set to be the priority for encoding, in view of the requirements for the updating of the Batangas State of the Coasts report, one of the immediate applications of the IIMS in the Province. Furthermore, guidelines and protocols on data collection, encoding, validation and access have been developed and agreed to by the concerned parties. A Facebook group has also been set up to facilitate online discussions and technical support for the implementation of the Batangas IIMS. The Facebook group is being maintained by PG-ENRO. De La Salle Lipa is one of PEMSEA's ICM Learning Centers in the Philippines.