Philippines: OCD strengthens emergency telecoms in NorMin

By Elaine O. Ratunil

Cagayan de Oro City — Communication and information are crucial in disasters.

With this, the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) Northern Mindanao convened recently the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) of the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC) in northern Mindanao in a bid to strengthen information and communication technology (ICT) capacities at the regional cluster level down to local levels to prepare for, respond to and recover from impacts of disasters.

OCD Region 10 Director Rosauro Arnel Gonzales Jr., said the cluster is organized by providing timely and resilient ICT support to improve response and coordination, decision-making, common operational areas for disaster response, common standard operating procedures (SOPs) as well as system architectures for compliance and interoperability.

Gonzales also shared the aftermath of natural disasters in the country and the need to develop guidelines that will rally the response cluster and humanitarian partners as well as local DRRMCs, in establishing and institutionalizing a rapid emergency telecommunications immediately following a disastrous event in the country.

He said during disaster, affected areas are so badly hit that ICT systems are rendered non-operational. These may result in the non-availability of essential voice, data, Internet, television and radio broadcast services that are critical during and post disaster management operations.

“How can you decide what response kung wala kang information or data regarding impacts of disasters,” Gonzales said.

He further said there have been cases where local government units (LGUs) cannot seek help from other agencies of government or even their neighboring cities and municipalities. In such cases, Gonzales said the activation of ETC is required to install, operate and maintain a system of communication that will reconnect the isolated LGUs’ Emergency Operations Centers to the council’s Operation Center and system.

Meanwhile, Gonzales said the Rapid Emergency Telecommunications Team (RETT) functions as a rapid deployment team of the ETC of RDRRMC. The team will ensure integrated communication flow from the regional down o the local level and vice-versa.

Spectrum policy assessment system (SPAS)

The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is currently venturing into a project wherein thousands of spectrum sensors will be deployed in strategic areas in the country to gather Radio Frequency (RF) signals from cities to municipal level.

More than 1,000 sensors will be installed covering high-radio density location to determine RF spectrum occupancy as a basis for policy formulation and decision-making for National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) implementation.