The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) will now be using satellite data to monitor infrastructure projects after it signed a memorandum of agreement with the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) on Monday.
‘At any given time, there are at least 25,000 to 30,000 ongoing DPWH projects,’ Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said during the signing.
‘We want to thank PhilSA because they will help us monitor, so there won’t be a repeat of what we saw in the past years, past decades, where we were being fooled by people from the DPWH,’ he recalled.
Dizon said the agreement with PhilSA will make it ‘easier’ for the two agencies to work together and develop tools for monitoring, particularly one that will allow for ‘minimal or zero human intervention.’
‘That is critical because, as we saw before, we had the technology but sometimes it is manipulated by bad people who want to hide the true status of projects. So, we want to work with PhilSA in [developing tools for monitoring with] minimal or zero human intervention,’ the DPWH chief explained.
For PhilSA officer in charge Gay Jane Perez, the agreement with the DPWH will allow the use of satellite imagery in ‘making information on infrastructure projects more accessible and transparent to the public.’
‘We will start with what we already have,’ Perez said. ‘We have archived data, and [we will also] maximize free satellite images that we can access.’
‘This is important because it gives historical context or information. We can go back several years ago to see what really happened with our projects,’ she stressed.
Moreover, PhilSA will work with DPWH in developing tools for infrastructure monitoring, resource accounting and project validation using technologies such as satellite remote sensing, artificial intelligence and geospatial analytics.
Aside from the DPWH, Perez said PhilSA has also formed an agreement with the Department of Agriculture to monitor anomalies in farm-to-market roads.
The agency is also eyeing to work with the Department of Education to check on the construction of classrooms and other school facilities.