Davao City gets multi-sectoral support for disaster preparedness

MANILA, Philippines - Davao City has long been praised for its ability to deliver good governance, business opportunities, public safety and services. Recently, the city raised the ante with the acquisition of its own weather monitoring equipment.

Despite being relatively typhoon-free, Davao City has not been spared by flash floods. The city experienced its worst flooding in 2007, prompting the immediate improvement of its drainage and waste management systems. 

Still not satisfied, the city government, under the leadership of then mayor Rodrigo Duterte, decided to expand what was already considered a world-class emergency response system by looking for partners to introduce essential enhancements.

Interestingly enough, the solution came from within Davao City. 

The city, with the help of Smart Communications Inc., saw the potential of further developing the search and rescue management entry of the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) which placed second during the telco’s 2009 SWEEP Innovation and Excellence Awards.

AdDU is one of Smart’s school partners under its Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program (SWEEP), a unique industry-academe partnership that seeks to help raise the level of technology and engineering education in the country, particularly in the field of Electronics and Communications Engineering. 

Under the program, student-faculty teams of SWEEP schools are recognized for innovative wireless applications during the annual SWEEP Awards.

AdDU’s SWEEP entry was initially a system designed to track sea vessels in distress via the signals it sends over Smart’s wireless network.

However, further discussions with the city government led to the system’s expansion to include inland tracking, weather and river monitoring capabilities.  

This resulted in Smart funding the research and development of a weather and flood monitoring system that would help Davao City’s disaster preparedness program.

Col. Verner Mario Monsanto (left), chief operating officer of Davao’s Rescue 911, and Smart Public Affairs Group head Ramon Isberto during the inauguration of the PSCC.

The Ateneo team worked closely with Smart and concerned local government agencies like Rescue 911, Davao City’s 24-hour emergency response team, and the Davao Gulf Management Council and the Philippine Coast Guard in testing the sea and land-based prototypes. 

Smart also brought in the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) to ensure that the system complied with World Meteorological Organization (WMO) standards.

Smart also facilitated and funded the weeklong immersion of AdDU team members in Pagasa. Under the guidance of Pagasa weather specialist II Ferdinand Barcenas, AdDU faculty and team leader engineer Marloue Pidor and project consultant George Frederick Tujan worked on the calibration of two prototypes of their low-cost automatic weather stations.

Each prototype includes a thermometer for measuring temperature, an anemometer for wind speed, wind vane for wind direction, hygrometer for humidity, barometer for pressure, and a rain gauge for rainfall. 

The reading collected by these devices will be transmitted over Smart’s wireless network to a Web-based application for analysis.

Pagasa officials were just as interested in ensuring that the AdDU platform would comply with WMO standards since it was to be deployed as part of an early warning system.   

Just two months earlier, the country’s weather agency also participated in a public-private partnership that would improve its weather monitoring capability with the co-location of its weather monitoring equipment on Smart’s cell site towers all over the country.

As the technology was being perfected, Davao City also embarked on the construction of the Public Safety Command Center (PSCC). 

Housed at the Rescue 911 compound, the PSCC is the city’s nerve center for all matters related to public safety, and this includes law enforcement, traffic management, health and social services, emergency and rescue services, and disaster prevention and management.

Recently, the city celebrated the fruition of its collaboration with private entities during the inauguration of the PSCC. In attendance were City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, then Pagasa administrator Prisco Nilo, and Col. Verner Mario Monsanto, chief operating officer of Davao’s Rescue 911. 

Inside the PSCC are an automated weather station (AWS), location tracking systems and a bank of CCTV monitors that show the images captured by numerous CCTV cameras deployed all over the city. 

During the event, Smart also donated 20 manual rain gauges for deployment in the city’s 20 flood-prone barangays.

Ramon Isberto, head of Smart’s Public Affairs Group, said, “The solution we have developed in partnership with the Davao City government and the Ateneo de Davao University is unique to Davao. We foresee, however, how other local government units can also benefit from the weather monitoring and disaster alert system that is now in place in Davao City.” 

Aside from the AWS located within the Rescue 911 compound, three more units will be deployed in Smart’s relay station in San Fernando, Bukidnon; and cell sites in Marilog and Buda.

Four complementary river monitoring stations, which were also developed by AdDU, will be set up along the Suwawan and Waan rivers and on the Bantol and Lacson bridges, all within Davao City.

Two tracking devices will be issued to the Coast Guard, while another two for land vehicles will be assigned to Rescue 911 for use in its ambulance and mobile patrol vehicles. A personal tracker has also been designed to be worn on the vests of Rescue 911 personnel.

With the support of private sector partners like Smart and AdDU and with inter-government agency collaboration, Davao City is showing the rest of the country how a strong will to enhance its disaster preparedness and response program can produce world-class facilities for the benefit of its residents.