Bacolod City to launch 'geofenced' 911 emergency hotline
GASATAYA (FB)
BACOLOD CITY – This highly urbanized city will launch a geofenced 911 emergency hotline later this month as part of the several governance and service-delivery reforms under the administration of Mayor Greg Gasataya.
In a statement on Wednesday, Gasataya said the state-of-the-art emergency response system will be unveiled by the third week of February as he also confirmed plans for a centralized 6100 hotline that will replace multiple department-specific contact lines as a single point for public concerns.
Gasataya announced the developments in a forum with the local business community earlier this week, where he assured the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) of support from the city government through various initiatives.
With the launch of the geofenced (virtual boundary around a physical area using GPS, Wi-Fi, RFID, or cellular data) 911 emergency hotline, Bacolodnons can dial only the three numbers and they will be directly connected to the city’s operations center for response.
Jose Evram Vera, research and planning chief of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said on Wednesday that currently, all emergency calls from Bacolod pass through the operations centers either in Cebu or in Negros Occidental before these can reach the city’s own operations center.
“Our hotlines are still mobile numbers, but once the 911 system is in place, the callers can just dial 911. If you are in Bacolod City, we can directly answer the call,” he added.
Such 911 technology, which places a geofence on the local government unit’s area of responsibility, has the capability of providing the location of a call from the start and matching the caller with the nearest responder locations. (PNA)