PIA Press Release
Sunday, January 15, 2012

DOST completes deployment, installation of 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 Quińones, 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. (PIA 8)