MANILA, Philippines -- To speed up rescue and emergency response this “Disaster Season,” the Philippine Red Cross is now working to automate existing information and sharing system.
PRC Chair Richard Gordon said he met with Smartmatic officials last Thursday and discuss plans to computerize their database and further hasten deployment of staff and volunteers during disasters.
Gordon said the country’s first automated May elections served as turning point and prompted him to start planning the modernization of the PRC’s disaster response operations.
“We intend to automate existing information and sharing system so that we could conduct speedier processing and staff deployment when the need arises,” Gordon explained.
He added that PRC needs to implement the project this rainy season, which also happens to the high time of disasters.
“All processes within Red Cross must be able to keep up with the sense of urgency expected from us,” Gordon said while adding that time is very vital in disaster response.
“Time is vital in the nature of our job. It is too important that even a matter of a split-second makes a significant difference,” he explained.
According to Gordon, he plans to come up with a comprehensive database of all the records in PRC’s Operation Center (OpCen), such as: all the reports from the organization’s local chapters; emergency contact numbers for the public’s reference; and inventory of blood and other equipment and supplies in their warehouse that are available for use or distribution.
“We need a computer that can manipulate all these, so that we can be spared from doing time-consuming manual data search from one file to another; and we can spend more time on matters that need it the most,” he said. - By Mayen Jaymalin
