Firetide, a provider of high-performance wireless infrastructure mesh networks, announced that Thailand's Royal Irrigation Department has completed its phase three deployment of the world's first mesh network capable of delivering live high-definition (HD) wireless video feeds of river water levels and telemetry data for real-time flood forecasting and historical data collection. In addition to the live HD video feeds to the control room, live VGA resolution video feeds are provided to the public via the Internet. The Firetide network, which covers a geographical distance of 372 km (231 miles), is the world's longest fully redundant wireless mesh network. New expansion phases of the network are planned for deployment beginning in 2H of 2012.
Firetide, a provider of high-performance wireless infrastructure mesh networks, announced that Thailand's Royal.jpg)
Irrigation Department has completed its phase three deployment of the world's first mesh network capable of delivering live high-definition (HD) wireless video feeds of river water levels and telemetry data for real-time flood forecasting and historical data collection. In addition to the live HD video feeds to the control room, live VGA resolution video feeds are provided to the public via the Internet. The Firetide network, which covers a geographical distance of 372 km (231 miles), is the world's longest fully redundant wireless mesh network. New expansion phases of the network are planned for deployment beginning in 2H of 2012.
Each year the reigning King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, takes a journey up the Chao Phraya River to get a better understanding of the well-being of the Thai people and to get a first-hand look at the river and the massive agricultural fields it feeds. Now at the age of 84, the King is unable to take this annual trip up the river, but still wishes to monitor rising water levels during the monsoon season in order to provide the Thai people with an early flood warning system and to keep a close eye on the health of the country's agricultural crops along the river.
To acknowledge the King's birthday wishes to protect the country's citizens and agricultural crops during the annual monsoon floods, the Thailand government decided to deploy a video and data network that enables citizens, security, and agricultural officials to monitor 372 km of the flood prone Chao Phraya River basin. After a full year of extensively testing different ADSL, satellite, GSM/3G and wireless technologies for this massive video and data network, the Thailand Royal Irrigation Department deployed Firetide's high-bandwidth wireless network to provide reliable live HD video feeds and mission-critical water level data applications 24/7.
“The cost of deploying this huge public safety network over a distance of 372 km would not have been feasible using traditional wired or fiber technology,” said Mr. Chachawal Punyavateenun, project creator and deputy director general of Thailand Royal Irrigation. “Point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless technologies were tested but were not able to overcome the technical requirements of this challenging network.
Furthermore, the speed in which the project team could deploy a fully redundant wireless infrastructure consisting of over 25 wireless links (hops) could have only been accomplished with Firetide's intelligent multipoint-to-multipoint wireless mesh architecture.”
Firetide's wireless infrastructure mesh network provides the people of Thailand with an advance flood warning system to mitigate property damage and saves lives. During the 2011 monsoon season, Thailand's Chao Phraya River basin experienced the worst flooding in more than half a century. The flood waters inundated nearly 240 thousand square km of land with average depths of 1.8 to 3 meters. More than 12.8 million people across 58 Thai provinces were affected by the flood, and the death toll from July through October rose to more than 600. The flood of 2011 was the world's fourth costliest natural disaster with estimated damages exceeding 45 billion USD.
Throughout this monsoon flood of 2011, the Firetide wireless network captured live video of rising river levels and made the images accessible to the Thai people via a real-time web feed. Nearly 300,000 daily web hits provided live images and information of the entire flood situation to the citizens and public safety officials of Thailand. The web feed proved to be a huge success and played an important role in providing citizens with real-time information needed to make critical decisions for moving valuable property in time to avoid the flood waters. Despite the flood's massive devastation, the wireless network aided in saving countless lives and billions of dollars in property damage.
Besides video, the Firetide wireless network supports a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that communicates and monitors the functionality and physical status of large water gates and dams that influence the amount of water being released downstream. The system also collects and monitors river water levels continuously and records the data for real-time analysis. The ability to collect live telemetry data provides authorities with the information needed to make immediate mission-critical decisions, as well as capture necessary data to plan for future floods.