University of Oregon’s Hazards Lab plans to help rural communities in central and eastern Oregon increase cell phone coverage and receive alerts for hazards like wildfires and floods.
OHAZ is a research lab within the department of Earth Sciences and includes both faculty and students that research environmental hazards within the Pacific Northwest.
Resilience monitoring includes the ShakeAlert and ALERTWildfire programs, which run on a network of sensors that can deliver data about earthquakes and wildfires to alert systems so that people are aware of the danger and able to respond quickly.
OHAZ uses the data from its wildfire cameras and seismic sensors for scientific research. OHAZ spokesperson Kelly Missett said OHAZ needed a network to transmit data from those sensors and cameras. The areas where this technology was placed often had slow wireless data service. OHAZ is solving this by building their communications network, and realized it could also benefit rural communities.
“What OHAZ wants to do is build new fiber cables so that these rural areas can have access to quick telecommunications and public community lifelines,” Missett said.
The Willamette Watershed Project is an OHAZ project that plans to construct 100 miles of fiber cables that will increase cell service in rural areas that experience slow wireless data. The cables will increase the speed and bandwidth of 4G LTE data service.
These cables will enable a hazard alerting system which will serve the rural areas of the McKenzie, Santiam and Sisters corridors, warning people about wildfires, landslides, floods and earthquakes.
Missett said this infrastructure is something that schools, utilities, first responders and fire stations could use. She said an example of the need for this kind of infrastructure, and the need for it to be immune to hazards, is the Holiday Farm Fire.
At the time when the wildfire hit communities up the McKenzie Bridge in 2020, COVID-19 had forced students to go online for school. But the fire burned communication infrastructure, limiting access to internet or cell service.
“So this project is something schools could potentially tap into,” she said. “We really want to start more with those key critical providers in communities.”
Rural fire stations could have reliable access to cameras installed by OHAZ across Oregon to detect and fight fires before they even hit a community, Missett said.
Missett said that all of the technology is built and developed in order to serve the community.
