ILOILO CITY (PIA) — Project SIGNAL or “Strategic Incident Georeferencing for Nationwide Alertness” of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in Western Visayas has enabled stakeholders to report incidents in real-time and request immediate response.
Major stakeholders in this project include the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Offices (DRRMOs) in municipal and provincial levels, including the Philippine National Police field offices and barangay officials all over Western Visayas, of which, based on the data presented by the DOST, Negros Occidental records the highest number of SIGNAL use with 8,032 incidents reported.
As for incident distribution, 56 percent are medical-related incidents like cardiac arrest, fainting, among others; 23 percent are vehicular accidents; 13 percent are trauma-related, such as physical assault, gunshot wounds, and stabbings; 1 percent are fire-related; 3 percent are obstetrics-related, and 4 percent for other incidents.
This was disclosed during the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas episode with DOST in Western Visayas Assistant Regional Director for Technical Operations Keithlyn Sarah Bernardino, highlighting that if the local government units frequently report all types of incidents, they could utilize the data as a decision support tool.
“Example in a certain place, may record sang madamo nga vehicular accidents, so ano ayhan nga intervention ang himuon sang local government unit to minimize the vehicular accident? These are among the features of our Project SIGNAL, nga hopefully, gamiton siya sang tanan naton nga LGUs,” said Bernardino.
(For example, in a certain place, there is a record of numerous vehicular accidents, so what interventions should the local government unit take to minimize vehicular accidents? These are among the features of our Project SIGNAL, which hopefully, will be used by our LGUs.)
Covered by the Project SIGNAL is the monitoring of incidents of flood, landslide, fire, vehicular accidents, impassable roads, and water level, among others.
“As of now, almost all, nahatag na naton [orientation] sa ila [LGUs] ang Project SIGNAL pero kinahanglan nga i-promote pa namon ang active nga use sini since we are still at 43 percent that it is actively used,” noted Bernardino.
(As of now, we have given [orientation] on Project SIGNAL to almost all LGUs but we need to promote more on its active use since we are still at 43 percent in terms of it being actively used.) (AGP/PIA 6)
