The Philippines Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) has implemented the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) for Tropical Cyclone and Flood Public warnings. PAGASA has an official CAP feed that publishes the “public alerts”. The Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO) was implemented to complement and interlink the PAGASA CAP-enabled system to offer a visual presentation of the PAGASA alerts on a map to improve the situational-awareness among all Stakeholders. Moreover, the Philippines Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) is implementing the CAP-enabled SAMBRO platform to issue and disseminate volcanic, earthquake, tsunami, and landslide warnings. The Office of the Civil Defense (OCD) Emergency Operation Center (EOC), mandated for the dissemination of National warnings, would relay the PAGASA and PHIVOLCS authored alert to the last-mile recipients with simple click of the “relay” button, offered to them through SAMBRO.
Evidence from the evaluation surveys on the SAMBRO acceptance, with an average score of 3.93 of 5.0 (Figure 8) by Philippines users, to be inclined towards agreeing that the technology is easy-to-use and useful. All things considered, with a score of 6.07 of 7.0, (Figure 9), the users had a positive perception of the technology with them indicating that it was beneficial, wise, and a good technology to adopt. To evaluate the acceptance and the performance of the SAMBRO-enabled Philippines Warning and Situational-Awareness Platform, a team of experts carried out a series of controlled-exercises in Quezon City, Manila Bay, and Subic Bay (Olangapo) involving members from invited Government Warning and Response Organizations.
Findings were that the PAGASA and PHIVOLCS staff were competent in issuing warnings, using SAMBRO, within the required “warning horizon” (Figure 5). With very short introductory course, on the use of the SAMBRO Browser-based and the Mobile APP, First-Responders were competent in receiving the alert to process them for activating the proper response plans. However, some supplementary training and modifications to the implementation are required.
SAMBRO features offer tools for filtering every National, Regional, Provincial and LGU warning issued in the country. It brings real-time awareness to all warning and response organizations in the Philippines.