Officials from India’s National Disaster Management Agency (DNMA) are to receive a demonstration of Digital Radio Mondiale’s Emergency Warning Feature (EWF) on Friday.
Delegates from NDMA will gather in the state of Gujarat for the a four-day session.
Presentations will show how emergency alerts and information can be delivered and managed using DRM.
The DRM standard is currently being rolled-out all over the country by All India Radio.
Presentations will made by Alexander Zink, Fraunhofer IIS, Vice-Chairman DRM Technical Committee, Radu Obreja, DRM Marketing Director and the Hon Chair of the DRM India Chapter, Yogendra Pal.
Speaking ahead of the session, Pal said: “The inbuilt Emergency Warning Feature in DRM is an excellent way to inform the public immediately about possible disasters and other emergencies. All the digital receivers get automatically tuned to audio and or data emergency warning signals in multiple languages, even if they are tuned to another station.”
“All India Radio is already in the process of installing 72 DRM transmitters, which will eventually cover about 70% of the population of the country. The Emergency Warning Feature is freely available in these transmitters. If the Government decides to use this feature, the only actions required would be to send the emergency signals to the transmitters. In parallel, the Government would need to inform receiver manufacturers to incorporate this feature in digital receivers.”
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has recommended the use of DRM Emergency Warning Feature in a recent paper.