Ho Chi Minh City Environment and Natural Resources Industry Data Sharing Platform: Meeting the Needs of Economic Development

Mr. Tran Van Bay - Deputy Director of Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ho Chi Minh City

PV: Up to now, the data sharing platform of the Natural Resources and Environment sector has been announced and put into operation by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. In your opinion, what benefits has this platform brought to the people, businesses, and state agencies of Ho Chi Minh City?

Mr. Tran Van Bay: One of the important tasks of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment is to provide and share information, data, and natural resource and environmental products for organizations and individuals to exploit and use in service of state management of natural resources and environment and socio -economic development. The natural resource and environmental data sharing platform was announced by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ho Chi Minh City on August 17, 2022. On September 5, 2023, the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City issued Decision No. 38/2023/QD-UBND promulgating the Regulation on collection, management, connection, sharing, exploitation and use of natural resource and environmental information and data in the city.

Through the natural resources and environmental data sharing platform, state agencies, businesses and individuals can easily access data, especially geospatial data, to exploit, use, integrate and develop new applications on many different technology platforms. For example, through this platform, people and organizations can know and learn about land use planning and land use plans. For example: Where is the Ring Road 3 project located, which district does it pass through, how much land does it occupy, who is affected by the Ring Road 3 planning, the plan, implementation progress...

For state agencies, through this platform for sharing data on the natural resources and environment sector, with the granted account, they can conveniently and quickly research and look up data on the natural resources and environment sector, and can even download data for direct processing and research..., greatly reducing the time spent accessing data.

The 1/2000 scale Zoning Planning data (land use layer) of Ho Chi Minh City is provided on the "Ho Chi Minh City Natural Resources and Environment Data Platform".

Reporter: It is known that based on the data sharing platform of the Natural Resources and Environment sector, departments, branches and localities have deployed specialized software to serve management areas. Can you share more about this?

Mr. Tran Van Bay: Departments, agencies and sectors can exploit data on the database platform of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to integrate their specialized data, creating new data with higher value. Units can completely create new products and software applications, only exploiting data through Web services without having to redo the data. From there, it contributes to shortening a lot of time and implementation costs.

In the past time, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ho Chi Minh City has introduced and supported the Departments and localities to exploit data such as: Department of Planning and Architecture, Department of Transport, Departmentof Education and Training, Thu Duc City, Binh Tan District, Institute of Research and Development, Institute of Construction Planning... Currently, the Department of Education and Training has developed an application to manage educational facilities throughout Ho Chi Minh City and an application for primary school admission based on GIS to overcome "school running", creating convenience for students to go to school near home. The GIS Application Center (Department of Science and Technology) is deploying a business management application for District 1.

Binh Tan District has used natural resources and environment data and other data to apply AI to identify construction fluctuations to serve the management of construction order in the area, monitor the formation and development of residential areas through comparing aerial photos over time... Thu Duc City has also exploited data from this platform to build applications based on geographic information technology on urban infrastructure, planning, construction, healthcare , religion, tourism...

PV: Besides the positive results, there are still limitations and shortcomings in the operation of the data sharing platform. How does the Department of Natural Resources and Environment handle this, sir?

Mr. Tran Van Bay: One of the limitations is that data on natural resources and environment has not been updated in a timely manner, much of the data is not current and does not accurately reflect the current situation, especially on cadastral maps and plots. This is also an issue that the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ho Chi Minh City has resolutely directed departments and offices to urgently implement. In addition, the data on the data sharing platform is essentially original data, formed through the professional activities of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. However, when exploiting data on the platform, this data is only for reference, so there are difficulties when carrying out administrative procedures.

The City's Department of Natural Resources and Environment's Digital Transformation Plan was issued by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee in Decision No. 08/QD-UBND dated January 5, 2022. On that basis, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment has built a system of specialized information, including land, environment, remote sensing mapping, water resources and minerals, hydrometeorology and climate change, seas and islands, monitoring systems... When completed, the city's specialized information systems for Natural Resources and Environment will be an online data source and shared through a data sharing platform for people, businesses, departments and branches to exploit and use to create added values.

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment has determined that although the data sharing platform for the Natural Resources and Environment sector has initially come into operation, this is just the beginning. Based on the needs of people, businesses and orientations, State management requirements to continue to deploy and develop. The goal is that data and information on natural resources and the environment will be easily accessible, exploited, used effectively and will be the foundation for creating a development environment, serving the socio-economic development of Ho Chi Minh City.

PV: Thank you very much!

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