Emergency warning system trialled at Eldorado

New break-in radio technology developed by Victorian company Emergency Warning Systems Ltd (EWS) has been successfully demonstrated at Eldorado in north-east Victoria for the Fire Services Commissioner and the state’s various emergency services organisations.

The executive director of EWS, Geoff Drucker, said, “Our technology delivers an outcome much like the warnings delivered in road tunnels where radio broadcasts are interrupted to communicate a warning message. But our system does not require restrictive tunnel technology to work and is suitable for advising people what to do when and how where there is a risk to lives and property from a natural disaster or security threat in a town or rural area.”

EWS’s patented technology is designed to save lives in emergencies by broadcasting a radio message saying what to do, when to do it and how. It searches for and finds every radio station operating in an area. It then broadcasts the emergency message in the target zone on all supporting radio stations to ensure that anyone listening to any radio station in the zone will get the message to take the appropriate action to protect lives and property.

Drucker said, “At Eldorado we demonstrated that our technology could reach three target zones identified by the Victorian Fire Services Commissioner, Craig Lapsley. The goal was to broadcast three different test messages over a radius of 500 m from the town’s CFA building, then in a 2 km radius, and finally 10 km from Eldorado.

“Being granted a ‘scientific licence’ to conduct the demonstration by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), it meant we had to create our own dummy radio station, which transmitted on 90.5FM.  However, Wangaratta radio station EDGE FM and the ABC Rural have been very supportive of the trial and EDGE FM even allowed 90.5 to rebroadcast their signal to ensure our station sounded just like a real radio broadcaster.

“Eldorado is a suitable location to demonstrate the capabilities of EWS’s technology: it is a bushfire-prone area and has poor to no mobile phone reception so getting messages to people at risk is a serious issue. There are many other areas in Victoria and other states where the same situation is the case,” Drucker said.

EWS’s technology can be deployed in different ways to suit different needs.  It can be installed in a police car to alert traffic ahead of a high-speed pursuit, it can be mounted on a trailer to be moved from location to location as a disaster unfolds such as rising flood waters and finally, it can be permanently installed in a disaster-prone location like Eldorado.

“One of the key attributes of the technology is that different messages can be sent to different locations all via the same radio stations at the same time. We are currently working with Telstra to see how our system can complement Emergency Alert, the text messaging system used in emergencies,” Drucker said.