Iloilo City is a highly urbanized city lauded for its number of achievements over the years. It can be recalled that the City of Love was included in the three awardees of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, for Clean Tourist City Award 2020 – 2022. The citation is said to be given in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam on Jan. 16, 2020
In an interview with Enoch J. Cruz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Goozam, the possibility of Iloilo becoming a future ‘smart city’ is attainable. According to Cruz, a smart city utilizes ‘Internet of Things’ devices as well as technologies (i.e. application programming interfaces, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, dashboards, machine learning, and mesh networks) to aid in governance and citizen benefits.
“The foundation for Iloilo to become a full-scale smart city is already present through the city’s investment on community-focused projects. And while it still requires a more thorough assessment to determine the quality of the high-speed communications, infrastructure of the city, there is already a starting point that we can roll out the initial phases of an IoT test implementation,” states Enoch J. Cruz, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Goozam.
Cruz also elaborates on the benefits of being a smart city.
“The smart city approach introduces use of a technology platform for the work of governance and the management of the many functions of a city. Technology brings efficiency and better service with the application of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that can help a city keep a finger on the pulse of its needs in terms of infrastructure, utilities, transportation, public safety, education, environment, health, and community services,” shares Cruz.
According to Cruz, the ’smart city’ initiative will inevitably improve the City of Love. Moreover, it will also improve the ‘incident command system’ mechanism of the city. Goozam’s industry stems from a tech company that specializes in cloud and mobility ‘software as a service’ solutions.
“If the City Government of Iloilo will champion the adoption of a smart city cloud backbone infrastructure, a working Smart City operating system (OS) that will initially deliver an essential service through an Incident Command System (ICS) that will manage the city’s emergency services using the GooZam next-generation 911 ICS followed by Population Services Management (PSM). In addition, Goozam will also provide non-emergency features such as a cashless payment system and a business services and goods management dashboard equipped with a “star rating” feature that will help improve service delivery and quality. These features will give the Iloilo City integrated response services capabilities, adds Cruz.
