OVP-DOC releases over 1k food boxes for third tranche of Davao City fire relief ops

The Office of the Vice President Disaster Operations Center (OVP-DOC) on Thursday released food boxes to cover the third tranche of relief operations to those who were left homeless by the February 25 fire in Barangay 21-C and Barangay 22-C, Piapi, Davao City.

The OVP-DOC, together with the OVP Davao Satellite Office,

Philippine National Police and the Task Force Davao, led the distribution of relief boxes to 963 families or over 3,000 individuals affected by the conflagration.

Last February 27 to March 5, on its first tranche of relief operations, the OVP-DOC conducted feeding program, covering breakfast, lunch and dinner to the fire victims. The second tranche of food boxes distribution was conducted on March 10.

The OVP Kalusugan Food Truck, a program of the OVP that seeks to help children suffering from malnutrition, hunger, and poor development, serves as the mobile food kitchen.

A total of 623 families from

The University of the Philippines in Mindanao (UPMIN) is looking to become a hub of artificial intelligence or AI in the region.

“One of our key programs right now is the Mindanao Innovation Initiative of which AI is one of our key programs under the initiative,” Chancellor Lyre Anni E. Murao said.

Another project is Genomics through the Philippine Genome Center Mindanao.

“You can marry these two technologies in future, by combining these two technologies you can create bio-markers for specific diseases cancer for example because we don’t have that yet for the Filipino population,” Chancellor Murao said.

She said there are several academic programs and research programs that is geared towards developing AI in the region.

Dr. Jose Ildefonso Rubrico, a professor at UP Mindanao has developed several AI technologies in the field of agriculture and disaster response.

“As early as 2018 we have already conceptualized this program, the Philippine Sky Artificial Intelligence (SkAI-Pinas) and the ASIMOV (Autonomous Societally Inspired Mission Oriented Vehicles) programs,” Rubrico said.

The SkAI-Pinas focuses on putting AI on remote sensing in order to hasten the widespread dissemination of satellite imagery data to Filipinos.

While ASIMOV uses unmanned automated vehicles (UAV) such as drones to help farmers detect the onset of banana diseases faster.

The ASIMOV is the DOST flagship research and development program in artificial intelligence and robotics. It comprises two projects; the Harmonized Aerial Watch and Knowledge based Survey or HAWKS project, and the Robot for Optimized and Autonomous Mission Enhancement Response or ROAMER.

The HAWKS (air component) and the ROAMER (land component) aims to developed AI enhanced robot technology capable of independent navigation, collision avoidance, vision-based feature detection and environmental mapping.

“These programs have really been conceptualized and implemented in order to help specifically ASIMOV the productivity sector and the agri-banana industry in Mindanao,” Rubrico said.

SkAI-Pinas and ASIMOV are spearheaded by UP Mindanao in partnership with the Depart-