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Published on October 2, 2007

 During the past three months, they have gone deep into Mae Hong Son to introduce a new technology to allow people in the province to avoid the natural disasters which affect the area almost every year.

"As 90 per cent of the topography in Mae Hong Son is high mountains and it's at risk of forest flood and landslides, we had the idea to apply technology to predict natural disasters and warn people in advance," said Nectec's director Pansak Siriruchatapong.

Nectec has turned the idea into a pilot project to implement an automatic monitoring and warning system in three areas in Mae Hong Son. The system, Pansak said, was used to detect the volume of rainfall in upper-hill areas which are the origin of forest floods.

The team has so far implemented sensor systems at Doi Kon Mul and Doi Chik Chong in Pai district as well as Doi Kio Lom in Phang Ma Pha district. The system, developed entirely by Nectec researchers, uses sensors to detect temperature, humidity and importantly the volume of rainfall. Instead of measuring each climate factor manually, the system measures all the factors automatically every five minutes, said Nectec's Embedded System programme director Sutat Patomnuphong who is the project leader.

After getting the results, he said all data would be sent to the central server wirelessly through the mobile-phone general packet radio service (GPRS) network. This would allow the officials at the centre to monitor changes in climate and rainfall remotely at all times.

To make the monitoring more efficient, Nectec has worked with Mae Hong Son Provincial Office of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation to set up the http://wqm.thaigov.net/msn/ website to report all the results detected at the upper hill sites.

"Once the results are sent through the GPRS network to the central server, we have a system that can upload the final result to the website automatically. Officials, other organisations as well as residents can check the change of climate and the volume of rainfall directly from the site," Sutat said.

Although each sensor measures all the climate factors every five minutes, it sends data to the central servers every 15 minutes. This is to save battery life at the base station.

"As the base station is located in the upper hills, we built the system to use energy from solar cells. We also have another sensor to detect the battery strength so we know how much power is available to support the whole system," Sutat said.

To issue warnings the system categorises risks at three levels. If rainfall volume of less than 100 millimetres is detected it shows green, which means normal status. If the volume reaches 100 millimetres, the status becomes yellow, so it's time for related organisations to prepare people for evacuation.

If the rainfall volume hits 150 millimetres, the system shows red, meaning there is a risk of forest flood.

Sutat said the system would be linked with the short message system to send a warning to assigned numbers, especially in situations when the rainfall hits the yellow or red zones, so officials get an alert immediately in real time.

Meanwhile, Nectec also plans to utilise radio to send an alert directly to each village to warn people in the community through a siren.

"This will warn people in each village at once to impending risks so they can prepare for evacuation. We expect to implement the new siren system next year," Sutat said. In this danger season for the province, the system is now a key tool for the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office, which has only 14 officials in the entire Mae Hong Son area to monitor and prepare for natural disasters.

The office's head Komson Suwanampa said the system facilitated the office's tasks as it gave advance warning to officials to prepare to tackle dangers and this made the disaster-prevention work more efficient.

"Since all the monitoring and warning systems are automatic, it can give us more accurate results rather than using manual measurement and prediction systems," Komson said.

During the signing ceremony for the memorandum of understanding with Nectec, Mae Hong Son governor Direk Knonkleeb said as the province faced natural disasters such as flash floods and landslides every year, he believed that the implementation of these systems would help the province reduce the damage that may occur from the disasters.

There are around 200 areas in Mae Hong Son which are at risk of forest floods and landslides and the most risky areas are in Pai district.

Direk said the new system was likely to make the life of people in Mae Hong Son much safer.

To complete the warnings for natural disasters, Sutat also plans to further develop the system by installing a new seismic sensor to detect vibrations in the land.

"The sensor will measure vibration levels so officials know which areas are prone to landslides and they can then initiate further preparation," he explained.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation

Mae Hong Son