Royal Irrigation Department lauded for IT system
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The Royal Irrigation Department was named a 2013 laureate of International Data Group's Computerworld Honours Programme in recognition of its visionary applications of information technology promoting positive social, economic and educational change.
The department deploys the world’s first public safety wireless mesh network capable of delivering live, high-definition (HD) video feeds of river water levels and telemetry data for real-time flood forecasting and historical data collection.
“Technology continues to play a pivotal role in transforming how business and society function. For the past 25 years the Computerworld Honours Programme has had the privilege of celebrating innovative IT achievements,” said John Amato, vice president and publisher of Computerworld.
“Computerworld is honoured to recognise the outstanding accomplishments of the 2013 class of laureates and to share their work. These projects demonstrate how IT can advance organisations’ ability to compete, innovate, communicate and prosper,” he said.
Chachawal Punyavateenun, project creator and deputy director-general of the department, said: “Providing a state-of-the-art wireless network has helped improve the lives of our citizens by protecting them and their property during devastating annual monsoon flooding.”
Besides the live HD video feeds to the Irrigation Department’s control room, the Firetide wireless infrastructure mesh network delivers live VGA (video graphics array) resolution video feeds of the Chao Phraya River to the public via the Internet. This provides the people of Thailand with a flood-warning system to mitigate property damage and save lives.
Each node links wirelessly to adjacent nodes upstream and downstream to form the mesh network. With link distances, or “hops”, of 20-45 kilometres between nodes, the system delivers up to 240 megabytes of bandwidth with less than a one-millisecond delay per hop for smooth, real-time data and video delivery for the entire length of the network.
The mesh network also provides full redundancy so if a link fails, another link takes over immediately with no noticeable interruption in service.
The actual combined length of all links, including redundant links, deployed within the 372km geographical distance totals 550km, making the network the world’s largest and longest wireless mesh network.
The Computerworld Honours Programme awards will be presented at a gala ceremony on June 3 at the Andrew W Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC.
