For a city like Davao, being able to respond quickly to emergencies is no small feat for the local government. It is, after all, the country’s biggest city with over 2,000 square kilometers of land area—more than three times the size of the entire National Capital Region.
Fortunately for its residents, advances in modern technology have made quick help possible. And, thanks to the pioneering efforts of AboitizPower Corp.’s Davao Light & Power Company and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, help is now just three digits away.
Central 911, short for Central Communications and Emergency Response Center, is the country’s first fully integrated emergency response service. It was established in 2002 and is patterned after the United States’ famous 911 system.
It handles calls concerning law enforcement and medical emergencies, urban search and rescue, and fire auxiliary services, and requests for K9 units to help sniff out drugs and bombs.
Davao Light’s sophisticated ECAD System
Central 911 makes use of Davao Light’s Emergency Computer-Aided Dispatch or ECAD System.
This sophisticated, computerized mapping system that allows Central 911 to immediately locate the origin of emergency calls anywhere within Davao Light’s franchise area. ECAD was developed by Davao Light specifically for Central 911 and is based on the Geographic Information System (GIS) that the power company is using.
Each Davao Light customer has his own “Location Code” printed in the upper right corner of their electrical bill. Using the ECAD map’s X and Y grid coordinates, Central 911 can immediately locate the electrical pole that the caller is connected to given this Location Code. This saves time as there’s no need to provide lengthy, time-consuming directions or addresses.
Central 911 will then alert emergency service providers such as the police and fire departments, and hospitals for ambulance service that are closest to the scene, or deploy its own emergency medical service units.
A big help to the city
“We are proud to have this kind of system in our city. It has really been a big help to the local government and the people we serve,” says Col. Mario Verner Monsanto, Central 911’s chief operating officer.
The system even tracks how fast police could respond to emergency calls. The system also uses color-coded icons to monitor movement and location of police mobile units: blue represents mobile units at rest; red for those responding and on the move, and green for mobile units that have arrived at the scene.
Monsanto says that, thanks to this technology, response time for police cases is just seven minutes on average, while emergency medical cases usually take only 12 to 13 minutes.
Davao Light is one of the distribution utilities of AboitizPower, the holding company for the Aboitiz Group’s investments in power generation, distribution, retail and power services. It is a major producer of renewable energy in the country with several hydroelectric and geothermal assets in its generation portfolio. The non-renewable portfolio consists of plants throughout the country. The distribution utilities it owns and operates are located in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. (www.abotizpower.com).
