Bhubaneswar: Special Relief Commissioner Bishnupada Sethi Wednesday reviewed the progress of implementation of Early Warning Dissemination System (EWDS) project and said that the state is all set to commission the system by March 2018.
During his meeting with ADMs, BDOs of coastal districts he directed the senior officials of the departments concerned to expedite the project work.
Officials said that the EWDS is the first-of-its-kind automatic public address system in the country. It will help the state to warn a vast population residing along its coast from the state headquarters through loud sirens from towers installed at 122 locations in the event of occurrence of natural disasters.
Some of the technical features of the project include satellite based mobile data voice terminals (SBMDVT), digital mobile radio (DMR), mass messaging system to be operated from the state emergency operation centre and universal communication interface to allow inter operability among different communication technologies like VHF, HF, Ham Radio, DMR, Mobile Phone, Land Line etc.
The project will be implemented in 22 blocks of six coastal districts – Balasore, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapara, Puri and Ganjam.
Alert Siren System at 122 locations near the coast (within 1.5 km approximately) will cover tourist places, fish landing centres and entire coastal habitations, officials said.
The SRC requested all the departments and officials concerned to complete all the pending work on a war footing.
PNN