CATEGORY:DISASTER PREPAREDNESS ------------------------------------ INSIDE GRENADA Saturday April 07,2007 by Rawle Titus GRENADA: A prototype telephonic system that responds to rainfall levels and gives advance warning on the possibility of flooding has arrived in Grenada. The system is being installed in upper catchment areas to monitor rainfall and indicate the potential for flooding in lower areas. Dr. Jacob Opadeyi, Senior Lecturer at UWI, St. Augustine, has been heading a team on a visit to Grenada to explain to Disaster Management stakeholders how the prototype telephonic system works. He says rising water levels trigger a telephone call to alert a central monitoring station. ‘The rainwater drips into a funnel and goes into a cylinder. Five electrodes will monitor any rise in the water level in the watershed” Dr. Opadeyi said. “Once the connectivity is established by any of those electrodes a component comprising an alarm system and a modem will dial a phone number that has been programmed into the system. That’s how simple the equipment works” he said. Similar training workshops have been taking place in Trinidad, Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica and St. Vincent. Each country will receive eight flood warning systems. Dr. Opadeyi says since flooding is ranked among the more frequent disasters in the region, the system is a major convenience compared to other technologies. “This technology is not available in other parts of the world, it’s an improvement of another technology that requires people to go and read the gauge and come back. And the effects of that is if persons have to go at night to read the gauge it would not only be dangerous but not practicable.” “So we designed this system that does not require any human intervention. It works 24 /7, it monitors itself …it will transmit the volume of rainfall as a signal to the relevant authorities so that they will be aware of what is happening in the upper watershed” said Dr.Opadeyi. The prototype telephonic rainfall early warning system was developed by the Engineering Institute of the University of the West Indies with involvement from the Caribbean Disaster Management Project and funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.