ABSTRACT
This project is a system consisting of two different forms of disaster management. First is the Fire DIFENDER, which provides wireless link between houses (containing Fire Alarm Boxes) in a community (primarily congested urban barangays) and the fire station to give direct emergency signal in cases of fire. Second is the Flood DIFENDER, an extra attribute of the system for flood prone community, which gives remote monitoring at barangay station of water level from a reference site for early detection of flood. Technologies contained in the project include RF Transmitters (at houses) and a Receiver (at Barangay station), GSM Module to send signal from the barangay to the fire station, and Ultrasonic sensor for water level detection with indicators located in the barangay station. This two-fold system aims to activate early responses and impose preparedness in order to lessen the impact of common disasters experienced by most urban communities.

1. INTRODUCTION
Fire and Flood are considered to be the two disasters in the Philippines having the most numbers of incidents.

For fire, factor, aside from late detection of occurrence of fire, is the amount of time taken to relay the emergency signal to the fire station. Frequently, fire stations defend late information transmission from the place where incident happened when asked for their late response.
Delays due to interviews and authentication, panic during incident, are considered barriers for transmission. Furthermore, the intensity of fire doubles in size every minute, according to the National Fire Protection Association, and reported cases of death were mostly caused by suffocation (4-6 minutes without oxygen causes death). Several cities like Boston have already fire alarm boxes located on the streets. However, the said fire alarm boxes utilize wired telegraphy in which most of these were destroyed by the typhoon and currently looking for upgrade. The system is prone to pranks due to its setting.
Communication agencies (117 is used nationwide, 911 here in Davao) are much known to the public than the fire station. The same is true to any social services, highway department, social society, medics, etc. At times of emergency, Central 911’s phone will first to cater the needing residence. The transfer of information to the main units, (e.g., Bureau of Fire Protection) adds to the waiting time of the residence in need of help.

For flood, aside from maintaining proper drainage systems, early detection must be at hand. This is particular to areas monitoring manually nearby rivers when heavy rainfall occurs and cannot afford to provide inexpensive and simple mechanism to ease the detection of water level.

Services of Fire and Flood DIFENDER are specifically for urban barangay communities. Existing fire-prone establishment which has dedicated wired link to the fire station can have the system but more efficient method can be implemented first like installing smoke and heat detectors. The second system (Flood DIFENDER) has also been added to cater another common need of communities in terms of disaster management, but for those that do not experience floods, it can be left behind from installing the entire DIFENDER. 2. OBJECTIVES
This project is aimed to provide barangays having frequent cases of fire an immediate and convenient method of sending an alert signal from the community to the barangay unit then to the local fire station. Also, to enable the emergency unit of the barangay to conveniently discern the need for evacuation without assigning someone to stand by the river to manually monitor the rise of the water level. Lastly, to cancel out the period of interviews from the call agent at emergency calls and to give a much faster alert to the fire fighters at times of fire events.

3. MATERIALS AND METHODS
3.1 Gathering of Data
This includes several interviews on authorities, the Central 911 office, the Bureau of Fire Protection Davao City, and at the Barangay, suggested to be an ideal recipient for the project due to its cases of fire and floods.

3.2 Project Design

3.2a Project Mechanism - Fire DIFENDER
There are chosen houses (DIFENDER House) where the fire alarm boxes are going to be installed. Each installed fire alarm boxes containing panic button sends pre-programmed code to the barangay through Radio frequency whenever pressed six times to avoid sending signal when pressed accidentally. This unique code defines the house’s owner, zone, purok and the barangay it is situated. Barangay Officials tell where to install fire alarm boxes and make sure that a regular residence have 2-3 DIFENDER Houses near them where they can run to in case of serious fire. The agreement has been settled between the barangay and the DIFENDER House owner for the responsibility of the alarm boxes. The code then, once received to the barangay hall, is transmitted to the fire station using a GSM Module. At fire station, the code is being extracted to identify from its recorded DIFENDER Houses the fire alarm box that is triggered. Then, the annunciator is now ready to speak the location of the on-going fire incident.

3.2b Project Mechanism - Flood DIFENDER
An Ultrasonic Sensor is used to detect a certain level of water from a reference site. When the device is triggered, the signal is sent through a Radio Frequency. The receiving end can be traced at the disaster unit, commonly at barangay hall, containing indications of the current water level. The system is now limited from other emergencies concerned. But this proposal can be made relevant soon after the system is open for another phase. Information dissemination is included in the system. Communities must be properly oriented for them to know how everything works out.

3.3 Component Utilization
Major Components include:
PIC (Peripheral Interface Controller). Main function is to be programmed as the DIFENDER Houses’ identity, and an the one that accepts the alert signal from the houses and relay the code to the GSM modem to send it to the fire station. RF TX/RX Module. About 150 m range and is well suited to be used in urban areas.
GSM Module. Main functionality is to send code to the fire station. This code contains the location of the fire alarm boxes that has been triggered.
Ultrasonic Module. It is a device that can detect the change in frequency. It is arranged six feet above the surface of the water.
Voice Annunciator. It is composed of a speaker connected to a computer and is programmed to speak a digitized voice of the location of the triggered alarm box, basing on its recorded entries of DIFENDER Houses.

3.4 Programming Language
Parts of the system that need a program is inside the fire alarm boxes and in the voice annunciator located in the fire station. Programmed code inside the PIC is accomplished by the C language, while at the fire station, BASIC language and SQL database are used to work out the received alert signal.

3.5 Project Testing Fire DIFENDER
Fire alarm boxes were tested to measure its maximum range from receivers which is located in the barangay station. This testing is done on different distances, line of sight communication. Latency time is also taken with different variations depending on the distance of the fire alarm box.
Flood DIFENDER
After getting a consistent output from different distance variation, the device is then tested with attached RF module to send corresponding output for monitoring. This project utilizes a low-cost RF module to send the alert signal. Most of the remote transmission like this uses RF module with wider range.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Fire DIFENDER
DISTANCE FROM THE RECEIVER (m) LATENCY
(s) CODE RECEIVED (binary)
30 5.2 00000101
60 6.3 00000101
90 6.5 00000101
100 6.9 00000101
150 - -

Result revealed that the Fire alarm box is able to send correct code with given distance from the receiver. There is tolerable amount of time in delay of the code to be received compared to conventional latency due to the above mentioned factors. To make sure that the fire alarm boxes provide integrity to its service, it has to be linked first at the receiver and test its connection before considering its permanent operation.

Flood DIFENDER
Formula is made available at its programming scheme to input the desired limit of ranges. Indications include:

Green – Above Normal
Yellow – Critical Level
Red – Dangerous Level
For sample limit for its prototype, results were recorded as follows:

INDICATION RANGE (cm) Time
Green 76 1
Yellow 48 1.2
Red 20 1 Indicators exhibit the real-time status of the water level from the remote area where the triggering of the ultrasonic took place. The range of the RF module extends up to 4 kilometers. For the prototype, RF module with range 150 meters has been utilized.

5. CONCLUSIONS
The system is designed to provide early response to most common disasters to lessen its impact and casualties. It will also help each of the member of the community know preparations and measures and impose to them responsibility that is considered to be a grown necessity in disaster management. Results had proven the capacity to easily direct the emergency signal to station that is able to respond. In order to verify the mechanism of the system especially on the side Fire DIFENDER some points has been discussed by the proponents and the fire station personnel, this lead the proponents to work more on the expansion of the range that a single fire alarm box can cater.