Hope for the best; prepare for the worst

As the biggest , real estate company in the country, the SM group of taipan Henry “Tatang” Sy surely invites a lot of speculation in the business sector, centering on what would be the next big deal for the group.

In quick succession, the group only a few months ago folded its real estate firms into listed SM Prime, making it the biggest property company in the Asean at $14-billion capitalization; it acquired a month ago 10 companies under the “Net” group, which had five office buildings at the fast moving Bonifacio Global City (BGC), plus five prime lots at the same BGC development project of Ayala Land, and, just a couple of weeks ago, it bagged a 300-hectare reclamation joint venture project with the city government of Pasay.

Surely the consolidation of its property companies put the SM group on top of the “big four” heap in real estate, in which the SM group has been lumped in business circles together with Ayala Land, Robinsons Land and Megaworld.

Word goes around that the SM group is pursuing talks with a couple of other real estate companies.

Based on word going around business, the SM group still intends to fight it out with Ayala Land for the acquisition of another dominant player in real estate: the Ortigas group. Also, the SM group’s acquisition of those 10 companies in the Net group should mean head-on competition with BGC developer Ayala Land.

As we all know, Ayala Land and the SM group almost came to blows over the SM Aura project in BGC, with Ayala Land fighting by proxy for the isolation of the Aura mall from the rest of the BGC complex. With the SM group’s acquisition of the Net properties, the group should gain a stronger foothold in BGC, since the properties of the Net group at the BGC were said to be choice lots.

The main strategy of the SM group is said to be land banking. The problem is that Metro Manila no longer has huge open space for development. The SM group thus may have to go for re-development of government property, for instance, or start the consolidation of small lots for integrated redevelopment, which was done years ago in main cities in Asia such as Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Ultimately, if and when property consolidation becomes the only way for the real estate giants to go, the government—particularly the Metro Manila Development Authority—may stumble upon the rare opportunity to do a semblance of urban planning.

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All over media these days are warnings of more weather disturbances in the magnitude of Super typhoon “Yolanda,” or perhaps even stronger, that will surely hit our country in the near future.

In a way, according to the supposed experts, supertyphoons are the new normal.

And so, what do we do in this country, no longer considered by the world as a wonderful little tropical paradise because the entire archipelago lies squarely in the path of supertyphoons that should become more murderous in the future?

That, precisely, was what the Aquino (Part II) administration had in mind when, in the aftermath of Yolanda, our leader, Benigno Simeon (aka BS), ordered the Department of Science and Technology  (DOST) to set up all-weather communications systems that should withstand those expected supertyphoons.

Perhaps the main message from our dear leader, BS, was this: Let us hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Anyway, it is true that we need to have a mind-set of preparedness, similar to the level of preparedness in Japan against earthquakes, which some say even exceeds the level of paranoia.

Enter this technology company more popularly associated with elections, IT-provider Smartmatic of PCOS fame, which also happens to be a provider of a high-technology public safety system that is touted to be indispensable in this thing called disaster preparedness.

From what I heard, Smartmatic already brought into the country its so-called unified security platform, or USP, which it billed as a turnkey solution for public safety and disaster management.

Word from Smartmatic is that UPS is a fully integrated system.

You see, our LGUs were said to have installed certain systems as part of their “preparedness” against disasters. The problem is that those systems work separately. They are not connected to a “nerve-center,” for instance, that can process the information from the various LGU systems and, thus, help form coordinated response from the government.

According to Smartmatic, its USP systems can integrate all the information from various parts of the country with its five “key elements: cognizance communication control and command center, emergency handling and dispatching, resource management, urban monitoring, alarms and early environment warnings.

Perhaps the most relevant of all the high-tech features of USP is the flood monitoring device that, according to Smartmatic, uses “telemetry.”

In a way, the device collects various data from remote areas and feeds them to the “nerve-center” for monitoring. In other words, the device is precisely what the response teams —whether from the government or the private sector—will need to react more efficiently to any disaster.

The UPS system also boasts of a “command and control” center, similar to the emergency telephone system in the United States, the dial 911, constantly tracking emergency vehicles that can be deployed to different areas in the disaster zone.

Included in the UPS are gadgets such as specialized CCTVs, to be set up in strategic spots, attached to Smartmatic-manufactured poles, solar-powered and all, including back-up power for zero downtime, equipped with audio speakers connected to the control center.

Moreover, the system can generate timely reports to the LGUs, and in times of disasters, information is always king. How does the system provide the info? Well, according to Smartmatic president for Asia-Pacific Cesar Flores, Smartmatic personnel must first do a thorough mapping of any city, town or barangay, so that the company can install a tailor-made system for the LGUs.

According to Smartmatic, the LGUs themselves will man the control center, although Smartmatic will provide technical training to the LGUs, up to the point of transferring the knowhow to the LGUs, so that they can eventually train their own people.

Flores said that, initially, Smartmatic was targeting the LGUs for its new product, although he noted that the company could deploy its technology nationwide, similar to the implementation of the automated election systems in 2010 and 2013.

“We want this technology to be maximized and used properly,” Flores said. “We are talking about lives here.”