THE CITY government and Smart Communications pilot-tested the automated weather stations (AWS), which is touted to be the next generation early warning system device to help mitigate loss of lives and properties in the lowlands.
Ramon R. Isberto, Smart public affairs group head, said the idea came from the local government unit to address the floodings in the city, particularly flashfloods coming from the upland areas that hit without warning on lowland communities.
The telecomm firm spent P1 million for the four AWS measures wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and rainfall, based on the technology calibrated by engineering students of the Ateneo de Davao University anchored on the World Meteorological Organization standards. The four AWS will be installed inside the Central 911 compound, Marilog, Buda and Smart’s relay station in San Fernando, Bukidnon.
All the data can be transmitted through SMS to officials, disaster groups, stakeholders and partners so they can make the necessary plans.
“The value of this the longer you do it, the more effective it is. The more data you put up, let’s say you put data for 2-3 years, then you’d be able to see relationships,” he said, adding that “you can make a model out of those relationships to measure how much water that flows in the river whenever it rains.”

With the Central 911, the first in the country which was conceptualized by the Aboitiz-owned Davao Light and Power Company, Davao City is one of the few cities that has the capability to act on the information, because “you can have all the information, but if you don’t have the body that has the resources and mandate to act on the information, it will just go to waste,” Mr. Isberto said.
Once they perfect the system, Mr. Isberto said they can offer the technology to the other local government units in the country, particularly those vulnerable to typhoons
Mario Verner S. Monsanto, operations head of Central 911, said aside from the AWS, Smart also donated 20 manual rain gauges, river level gauges, personal tracker, land and sea tracking devises.
The 20 rain gauges, he said, will be deployed to 20 selected flood-prone villages in the city, or about a third of the total identified vulnerable villages tagged by the city disaster coordinating council.
“We can identify two of these people (in the village) and train them together with Pagasa (weather bureau) so they will be one to send the data through text,” he said.
The long-term goal, however, is to collate one or two years’ worth of data to come up with a computer model for a better correlational projection of cause and effect.