Infrastructure: Gabal

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While the region’s five major countries have a significant number of rural residents. The country of Gabal contains a mixture of emerging urban cities and primitive rural villages. Modern utilities are found predominantly in the major cities and at reasonable levels throughout the rural countryside. Forty-three percent of the nation has access to electricity with 77.5 percent of urban areas and 36 percent of rural areas respectively.   93.3 percent of Gabal has access to potable water, while 100 percent of the nation having access to a sanitation systems (60.2 percent have access to modern sewage systems).

The infrastructure of Gabal is stressed and outdated. Emphasis has been placed on the modernizing of the infrastructure in recent years but it continues to be stressed due to lack of resources. Gabal has a dated mass transit system. Bus companies provide transportation in major cities and to rural areas.  The country still uses converted WWII vehicles as taxis and mopeds as a means for transportation that release significant pollutants into the environment. Two airports (one with a paved runway) that are able to handle smaller commercial aircraft for the entire nation. The one seaport is dated and can only handle shallow draft ships.  The country suffers from high levels of pollution in the rural areas and the government has made policies to combat pollution in rural environments and water supplies.

Text from Summary for comparison/inclusion

While the region’s five major countries have a significant number of rural residents. The country of Gabal contains a mixture of emerging urban cities and primitive rural villages. Modern utilities are found predominantly in the major cities and at reasonable levels throughout the rural countryside. Forty-three percent of the nation has access to electricity with 77.5 percent of urban areas and 36 percent of rural areas respectively.   93.3 percent of Gabal has access to potable water, while 100 percent of the nation having access to a sanitation systems (60.2 percent have access to modern sewage systems).

The infrastructure of Gabal is stressed and outdated. Emphasis has been placed on the modernizing of the infrastructure in recent years but it continues to be stressed due to lack of resources. Gabal has a dated mass transit system. Bus companies provide transportation in major cities and to rural areas.  The country still uses converted WWII vehicles as taxis and mopeds as a means for transportation that release significant pollutants into the environment. Two airports (one with a paved runway) that are able to handle smaller commercial aircraft for the entire nation. The one seaport is dated and can only handle shallow draft ships.  The country suffers from high levels of pollution in the rural areas and the government has made policies to combat pollution in rural environments and water supplies.

Construction Patterns

Many of the urban and suburban cities contain single story to three story buildings. The cities tend to be extremely densely populated for an area of that size due to the mountainous regions found throughout the Island nation. Typical rural construction is low quality wooden houses with corrugated roofs. 

The government has only recently (within the past 10 years) started using urban planning although there is still not not a national standard required for layout of urban areas or minimum access to basic services. The city planners do have the knowledge for strategic and sustainable city planning.  The materials consist of concrete, steel, and rebar construction methods. In rural areas prone to flooding, houses are built on pilings to prevent flooding. 

Military operations in urban areas will strained due to limited amount of roads and the antiquated infrastructure. Resources will be needed to augment the infrastructure in the way of power, facilities, sewage, and rations.  The military will find additional resources in the form of large unskilled labor pools.

Major Gabalian Cities and Urban Zones

Gabal has three major cities that account for 75% of the population of the nation.

Coron

Coron (51,803 residents), Gabal’s capital city, serves as the only port for the nation and sits on Coron Bay.  The areas north of the Pasig River tend to be the centers of trade and commerce.  The city center serves as the core for the presidential palace.  The buildings in the main urban areas consist of high-rise buildings, single family and duplex dwellings, and resort type accommodations for tourists.  The city is very condensed as the bay of Coron is to the west and south and it has mountains surrounding the other sides.

Culion

Culion (20,139 residents) lies approximately 22 km miles southwest of Coron and is the third largest city in Gabal. The economy of Culion is one based on a tourist-oriented system.  It also has several of the best tourist beaches, which bring revenue to the local area. The construction in the city center is mainly one to three story resort hotels, hostels and single-family dwellings of concrete and rebar construction.  As you move out of the center, it becomes more rural and again becomes more subsistence living and impoverished.

Busuanga

Busuanga (22,046 residents) is located 45 km northwest of Coron and is the second largest city in Gabal. Tourism plays a significant role in the economy of the city. Construction in the city is mainly one-story resort hotels single-family dwellings of concrete and rebar construction.  As you move out of the center, it becomes more rural and again becomes more subsistence living and impoverished. 

Population Density

• Coron: 190 per square mile
• Culion: 100 per square mile
• Busuanga: 150 per square mile

Utilities Present

The Pacific faces a dichotomy when it comes to utilities present such as electricity, water, and sewage treatment. The majority of urban households can access modern utilities, but the rural areas have far more limited access to a number, if not all of them..

Power

Gabal is reliant on importing resources to meet the power consumption needs of the country 43 percent of the population has access to electricity with 77.5 percent of urban areas having electricity and 36 percent of the rural areas having access to electricity.  Gabal produces 100 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels.   The power grid is over 40 years old and has not been upgraded since installation.  It is very common for daily blackouts causing several of the major businesses to have a generator to provide power during these times.

Water

Nearly all of the residents of Gabal have access to potable water, 93.3 percent of the population.  As the landscape becomes more rural the methods for obtaining water move to unprotected wells and streams.  In the major urban areas water is collected from rain water or by a 40 year old desalinization plant that is operating at 70% capacity due to maintenance issues, inability to secure repair parts, and increased contamination in the water supply that the plant has trouble filtering out the contaminates.

The water distribution pipes are old and in some parts of the cities are starting to fail.  The public works department is constantly repairing them, which also damages the roadways.

Sewage

All residents have access to some type of sanitation services. 60.2 percent of the population has access to modern plumbing (septic or sewer systems) while 39.8 percent have access to unimproved methods of sanitation.  The main form is pit latrines.  Less than 10 percent of the wastewater is treated which has led to contamination of almost all of the groundwater. Due to limited wastewater treatment facilities, most domestic wastewater is discharged without treatment. 

While an outdated marginally capable sewage systems exist in major urban areas, sewage systems in rural areas are further antiquated or non-existent.  Only 52.2 percent of rural residents of Gabal have access to a sewage system that are predominantly in form of septic systems.  The remaining 39.8 percent of the rural population use pit latrines.

Transportation Architecture

Roads are the primary transportation method throughout Gabal.  The roads, especially rural roads, are in poor condition at best, due to lack of maintenance.  The mining companies and logging industry funded the development of the road networks over 40 years ago to move the products to the ports.  Since the decline of those industries, little has been done to maintain or improve them.

Road Systems

Overall, roads in Gabal fail to meet US or Western European standards.  Driving is extremely hazardous and becomes even more hazardous at night due to lack of drivers skills and poor roads.  In general, drivers fail to obey traffic laws and drive erratically.  The conditions of the roads range from maintained paved roads to dirt tracks that are used by pedestrians and livestock. 

Gabal does not have a national road network.  The island nation has a total of 496 km of roads and 155 km are paved.  The paved roads are in various states disrepair. The road network was originally developed and financed by the mining and logging companies to facilitate the movement of equipment and goods.  Since the decline in logging and chromite mining, the nation has not done routine maintenance and upkeep on the roads.  Gabal has over 341 km of unpaved dirt roads.  These roads can be especially dangerous due to not being maintained, do not have streetlights, pedestrians walk on them, and used to move livestock.

Military traffic / convoys on the road networks will be stressed due to lack of quality roads and the unmaintained dirt roads throughout the island nation.  The amount of pedestrian traffic on the rural roads will also be an issue.

Bus

The larger the city the more likely it is to have more frequent bus traffic.  The bus companies are independently owned and operated.  The buses run both in the major metropolitan areas and to the more rural areas.  Travel by bus to the more remote areas of the each island can take several hours despite the small size of the island.  The conditions of the roads degrades the further you move from the larger urban centers.  There is limited bus services on Culion Island focusing mainly on the large tourist centers of Culion proper and Molpok.

Rail

Due to the small size of the islands, Gabal does not have any railway lines.  The mining and timber companies did feel it would be economically sound to install them and the government lacks the resources to install them now.

Air Transportation Systems

All five countries maintain both paved and unpaved runways of varying distances. Many of the unpaved runways resemble cleared dirt strips not suitable for most modern aircraft.

Gabal contains two airports with one known paved runways.  The map shows the location of all the major airports and the chart below shows the details for each runway.  Gabal’s known runways by length include the following:

Paved Runways

• Over 10,000 feet: 0
• 8,000 to 10,000 feet: 0
• 5,000 to 8,000 feet: 0
• 3,000 to 5,000 feet: 1
• Under 3,000 feet: 0

Major Runways

Airport	ICAO ID	Elevation (ft)	DLAT	DLONG	Rwy Length (ft)	Width (ft)	Surface Type	Remarks
Coron International	RPVV	148	12.1215	120.1000	3,300	98	Concrete
Culion Airstrip	CUJ	154	11.8553	119.9378	*	*	Dirt

Airports/Airlines

Gabal Airlines is the flagship carrier for Gabal.  Gabal Airlines flies internationally to 5 countries across the Pacific region.  One international airport operates in Gabal at Francisco B. Reyes Airport.  Gabal does not possess enough airports to support major military operations.

Ports/Sea/River Transportation Systems

The Port of Coron consists of one port facility and is a shallow water port.  It is ran by the governement of Gabal has a pier that extends 123m and is 12m wide with a depth of 10m alongside. The port is open year round and handle some ships.  Larger vessels anchor in the bay of Coron which has a depth of 18.3-22 m and use small crafts and barges to move goods and people to shore. The port was originally designed for use by the loggin and mining companies but has since been upgraded to support the tourist industry.  there is a possibility of dredging the port and bay to make it capable of to support ships with a larger draft if an entity would invest in it.

Pipelines

Gabal does not possess any pipelines and does not plan to install any.

Telecommunications Architecture

In Gabal, most citizens can access a telephone and listen to a radio or television, but only approximately 50 percent of the population has access to the internet.  The tourism industry and government operates approximately one thousand landlines and only 19 percent of the residents have cell phones.  The country has one radio stations that is government owned.  there is no local television channels and residents are required to use satellite dishes to watch television.  (See Information variable for additional details.)

Agriculture

The nation of Gabal has limited agricultural capacity.  Culion Island’s lowland area is the only viable area that is fertile enough to sustain long-term agriculture.  The terraced fields use rainwater for irrigation.  The methods of farming used in the past have caused the majority of the land to contaminated from run off from the chromite mines or improper application of chemicals.  Sustainable farming and crop rotation has only been introduced in the past thirty years. The island nation is unable to have any large-scale commercial farms due to limited arable land.  The government has begun to replant the deforested areas, as they plan in upcoming years to begin using sustainable logging.

Military operations must be cognizant as to not disrupt the agriculture as the already limited capacity would affect the nation greatly.  In addition, the farming methods in the past relied on the use of toxic pesticides that are outlawed in Western countries. Military units need to be cognizant of the run off from the fields and contamination to the soil from these pesticides as they are carcinogens.

Industry

Gabal has limited capacity and has focused mainly on the mining of chromite reserves.  The methods used antiquated by modern standards and highly labor intensive.  The government has tried to diversify by selling the rights to fish its territorial waters to other nations.  This has yielded limited profitability and Gabal has not invested in any infrastructure to process and package the fish that would be required for any large scale commercial industry.  Foreign investors are attempting to capitalize on the natural beauty of islands and have been focusing on tourism.  The infrastructure will need continual modernization to meet the expectations and volume of tourists expected.

Oil/Gas

Gabal has no oil infrastructure does not produce any barrels of crude a day.  The country must import all of the oil to meet the demand in the country from regional actors across the region.  There has been no plans for exploration of oil.

Military operations in the area must ensure that oil is imported to support the economy and citizens of the country during and post hostilities.

Gabal has no natural gas reserves and must import all natural gas used.

Defense Industries

Gabal does not have a defense industry and must import all items for military use.

Nuclear

Gabal does not possess the infrastructure nor the resources to have nuclear capabilities.

Space

Gabal does not have an active space program.  They rely on leased satellites from the Republic of Torbia for communications and navigational needs.

Pollution

Gabal faces pollution issues that include soil contamination, ground water contamination, and pollution of lakes and rivers.  Much of the pollution stems from the lack of environmental regulation, unregulated chromite mining, and improper application of pesticides in farming. Gabal has taken an aggressive stance on reducing the pollution throughout the country.