Almost three million Quezon City residents will avail of a modern system of quick response in case of disasters and emergencies before the end of this year.
Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista, who led the launching of the QC government’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) today at the city’s disaster risk reduction management council building, said the center will be fully operational by November with the installation of 243 high-definition IP (internet protocol) surveillance cameras in major intersections and primary hot spots all over the city.
The EOC, the mayor told guests including Land Transportation Office chief Edgar Galvante, Metro Manila Development Authority officer-in-charge Emerson Carlos, QCPD acting director Senior Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar and QC fire marshal Supt. Jesus Fernandez, will improve not only the city’s crime watch and prevention mechanisms but also its response capability during disaster and other emergency situations and its vehicular traffic monitoring.
The city’s emergency operations center, housed at the newly constructed disaster risk reduction management building at the city hall, is equipped with high-end servers, networking and communication equipment and an integrated video wall. The center also boasts of an advanced automatic telephone switching system.
The mayor said the 243 units of high-definition IP surveillance cameras are connected to P300-million state-of-the-art equipment fully equipped with video analytics of face recognition, vehicle and crowd counting, license plate recognition, flood monitoring, and video image enhancement.
Other features of the emergency response system are underground fiber optic cable deployment on national roads, back-up wireless communication network, high definition surveillance cameras, computer-aided dispatch application system, LED display boards on major roads of the city and a 36-kilowatt solar hybrid system which will act as an emergency power supply for the city’s emergency operations center in cases of prolonged power outages during calamities.
Also, part of the city’s new emergency response system will be the setting up of an emergency telephone hotline for QC, that is, 122.
To date, around 50 surveillance cameras have already been installed along QC’s major thoroughfares, including Quezon Avenue, Timog Avenue, Commonwealth Avenue and around the city hall complex.