Emergency alerts for mining sector
THE critical issue of emergency services and rescue at mines, quarries, and petrochemical plants is being facilitated by a fast, easy, reliable team communications system tailored to the specific needs of every operation.
Driven by software that calls for a zero failure rate, the ALERTS system (Adtec Linked Emergency Response Telephone System) is accordingly based on Linux and SQL platforms.
Adtec Communications MD Jeremy Sharp says although the bigger mines in particular will have their own emergency centre - as would petrochemical sites - all companies will have a significant level of emergency team organisation, especially because many mines are often in geographically isolated areas.
"In NSW for instance, the coal mines have a service called Mines Rescue. There are four sites in this State and each of these places has a mines rescue office to cover their geographic areas and would coordinate whatever rescue needs to be done.
"ALERTS is a new technology that is totally instant and it suffers no form of systems delay. With ALERTS, emergency teams can record who gets the message and who is acting on it.
"There are two sides to ALERTS: the first, most commonly used is a fast dial conference call, the second is voice messaging. There is SMS where required and now it also has call forwarding and voice recording.
"Most mining sites have strong cellular networks so there is normally good coverage. The ALERTS system is very transportable like the rest of mining equipment."
ALERTS is activated by calling a telephone number and entering a PIN code. Simple voice prompts for initiators and participants are used and multiple contact numbers are possible for each participant.
Calls are programmable for emergency conference or broadcast messaging and multiple conferences can be held simultaneously with local or remote control by operator software.
Optional facilities include interfaces to radio paging systems; the recording of all voice traffic on a system; interactive voice response menus for different actions; and team rostering so members can make themselves unavailable, when necessary.
All system activity is logged and the system memory is retained in event of a power failure.
Ideal for any situation where an organisation needs to connect people and mobilise response teams, ALERTS provides emergency services with alerting capabilities, trauma team notification, events management, project management, disaster recovery, and news coverage.
8-Sep-2006