Background
Bohol Island is the tenth largest island in the Philippines and forms a province in the Central Visayas Region. The main island of Bohol has an area of 3,269 km2. The terrain is largely hilly with a limestone plateau in the centre. The tropical climate is characterised by heavy and frequent rainfall and extreme weather occurrences such as typhoons. The island has a population of approximately 1.2 million people.
Challenge
Maximize number of concurrent calls to fulfil the needs for daily and emergency operations
Enable inter-department communication across a vast area
The key task was to provide a digital two-way radio communication system for use by the Local Government Unit of Bohol to carry out daily operations. Most importantly, it was needed for use by the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) to help it better coordinate and communicate during disaster and emergency operations.
The radio network had to cover the metropolitan area of Tagbilaran City, the provincial capital, as well as other nearby municipalities. A major requirement for the new radio system was to enable an efficient way to communicate between different government organisations to ensure a smooth and fast transfer of information.
Solution
Hytera was able to demonstrate to the customer its extensive experience in implementing projects for local governments units, as well as for public safety organisations, and this played a key part in securing the contract. Hytera recommended a DMR Trunking Lite System.
This is a form of trunking solution that allows a higher number of concurrent calls compared to a DMR Conventional System. The advantage of having more available radio channels is that it allows more calls to pass through the network at the same time, which is particularly beneficial for rescue operations.
The DMR system also provided a virtual map which allows visual representation of the locations of the rescuers transmitted via the integrated GPS in the radios. A Hytera Network Monitoring System was installed to help maintain the health of the system by providing the real-time status of each part of the network and to provide flexibility in troubleshooting, configuration and upgrades.
A PSTN network was also included to enable the future expansion of Bohol’s Local Emergency Telephone system (TaRSIER117). A voice recording function was implemented to ensure important conversations between radio users are saved.
Hytera supplied DMR PD78XG and PD70XG handheld radio terminals. Both models deliver excellent quality in terms of output power, signal sensitivity, battery capacity, voice clarity, security and personalization through programmable buttons. The IP67 water ingress protection rating ensures the radio terminals can withstand heavy rain, especially during typhoons.
Hytera provided DMR MD78XG units for the mobile and base radios. The MD78XG shares a similar functionality with the PD78XG, but it has a greater output power at 45W. This means it has a much larger coverage range than the handhelds. All three terminals are equipped with emergency buttons, which allows the user to make a direct call to the dispatcher if they or a colleague gets into trouble.
Benefits
Voice and data services
The radio communication system not only delivers mission critical voice services, but also supports digital data services by providing GPS location, short data messages, voice recording, status alerts, emergency communication and so on.
Greater inter-agency communication and efficiency
Headed by the PDRRMO, the new radio network enables much improved inter-agency communications, which will help provide a faster response and enable proper coordination between different government units like the Coast Guard, Bureau of Fire, Police, and even the Army.
The DMR Trunking Lite solution provides Bohol PDRRMO with a cost-effective way of supporting more users with the ability to communicate at the same time, but without the need to invest in a full-scale trunking network. This enables a more efficient response to any disaster, which helps to save lives.
Customer Voice
“Using the Hytera DMR System, we were able to integrate different sectors of our response team which includes, but is not limited to, the police, fire, coast guard, disaster-response, engineering, etc. We are also able to constantly monitor their location and status during important operations like disaster and rescue.”
Jose Niño Quimson, official from the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office of Bohol