Last May 22, 2023, the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of San Carlos held its first GIS Mini Conference with the theme “Multidisciplinary Applications of GIS across Cebu” at Rigney Hall and the lobby of the Lawrence Bunzel Building in Talamban Campus.

Assistant Chair Engr. Kathrina Borgonia started the program with her opening remarks. Two invited speakers presented during the said event. Engr. Bernard Pulido, GIS Head, City Planning and Development Office, Mandaue City, shared how GIS has helped in mapping out various natural resources, structures, building footprints, people, and vulnerabilities of certain areas to natural calamities. This plays a crucial role in the decision-making procedures by the LGUs.

Meanwhile, Engr. Wilson S. Ramos, Local Officer 3, Cebu Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office, talked about the possibility of incorporating GIS applications for mapping out the vulnerability of cities or municipalities to different disasters. He shared that in the early ’90’s, they manually plotted maps during disaster risk reduction planning. Today, maps can be stored digitally, analyzed, and printed through a wide variety of GIS software.

An undergraduate research group presented their partially finished thesis results on “GIS Based Landslide Susceptibility Mapping using 9 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Causative Factors for Barangay Agsungot and Barangay Guba in Cebu City.” These barangays have no to little know-how on the usage of GIS, thus landslide susceptibility maps are not available. Several cases of land movement can be seen in these barangays such as landslides and creep. This is evidenced through incident reports filed at their respective barangay halls. This information was used in locating areas that might be susceptible to movement of the soil or rocks through the use of Logistic Regression Model (LRM) and comparing it with the Weights of Evidence Method (WEM). Results revealed the areas that are susceptible to the occurrence of a landslide which are verified by the incident reports. The said models were able to identify these hotspots with 70 to 90% accuracy.

The remainder of the day was spent listening to the final GIS project presentations of students from the various GIS classes. The presenter on “Mapping Out Hospitals in Siquijor” won as the best presenter among the nine groups while the poster “Developing a GIS Model for Predicting Flood Risk in Mambaling, Cebu City” bagged the best poster award. The said activity concluded with Department of Civil Engineering Chair Engr. Janice Jamora’s closing remarks.