By Philippine Information Agency (PIA 8)
January
15, 2012
TACLOBAN CITY – The
Department of Science and Technology has completed the deployment and
installation of three weather monitoring facilities in
Eastern Visayas.
These facilities
include six (6) Automated Weather Stations, seven (7) Automatic Rain
Gauges and two (2) water level sensors, DOST-8 Information Officer,
Mr. Florentino Quiñones, disclosed during the recently-held Harampang
Ha PIA at the Philippine Information Agency Regional Office in
Tacloban
City.
The first facility is
the Automated Weather Station which was installed in six (6) areas of
the region specifically Catarman in Northern Samar, Maasin in Southern
Leyte, Saint Bernard in
Southern Leyte, Salcedo in
Eastern Samar, Catbalogan in
Samar and Tacloban
City in the province of Leyte.
The Automated Weather
Station (AWS) are monitoring stations equipped with different sensors
capable of measuring the following weather parameters: wind speed and
direction, air temperature, air humidity, air pressure, and rain
amount, duration and intensity, Mr. Quińones said.
The weather data are
sent wirelessly through the cellular network as a text message or
Short Messaging System (SMS). Each station is equipped with the ASTI-developed
data-logger platform GSM Data Acquisition Terminal (GDAT) that serves
as the mini-computer or brain that intelligently controls all the
functions and data communications of the station.
Designed to be rugged
and standalone, the station can be deployed even in the harshest
remote areas and can operate continuously, as it gets power from the
sun, backed up by the internal rechargeable battery.
All weather data from
the remote stations are collected on a central database server and
further analyzed. The processed data are readily available and easily
accessible to local authorities, especially the disaster response unit
over the Internet, on a real-time basis. A web-based visualization
tool enables quick information or warning dissemination and disaster
preparedness, as well as provides easy mapping to pinpoint which areas
are affected in a finer scale.
The second facility is
the automatic rain gauges which were installed in seven (7) areas of
the Region, among others, in Calbayog, Can-Avid, Catarman, Leyte near
Dost-8, another in Southern Leyte, and in Naval, Biliran.
The Automated Rain
Gauges were developed to gather and record the amount of rainfall over
a set period of time.
Finally, the third
facility is the water level sensor, two of which have been installed
in Saint Bernard, Southern Leyte. One was at the upstream side at
Barangay Libas while another one was installed downstream at Lawigan
Bridge.
The weather
monitoring facilities are measures to obtain timely and accurate data,
the key to disaster prevention and mitigation.
Article source: http://www.samarnews.com/news2012/jan/b536.htm