With extreme weather events on the rise, deploying a resilient radio network which has already proven itself during natural disasters has become imperative for public safety organizations. New Zealand Police’s 400MHz Tornado radio network performed admirably when a Southern Hemisphere storm, Cyclone Gabrielle, decimated the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island due to extreme flooding and winds.
Ripping out roads and bridges, the floods also destroyed the fiber network in the region which had been deployed along the roads. This issue was then compounded by the fact that power outages took close to over 270 cell towers offline. With three links operational in the area where the strongest winds hit, NZ Police relied on Ubiik Mimomax radios to provide vital voice backhaul links to connect their field officers during the disaster. “These failures with phone connectivity, data circuits and the cellular networks meant that communications-wise, the Eastern Districts were entirely cut off,” says Richard Hutchinson, Infrastructure Engineer, NZ Police.
Over the course of 55 hours, some regions along the east coast received 600% of their normal February rainfall. NZ Police were gratified to discover their sub 1 GHz narrowband radio network performed well, despite the heavy rain, in alignment with advice provided by radio standards organisations, ITU and TIA. Furthermore, winds consistently registering over 90 miles per hour also put the antennas in the Ubiik Mimomax network to the test. “When full connectivity was restored the status pages showed that the Ubiik Mimomax links had operated as designed with few, if any, errors,” said Mr. Hutchinson.
Having already deployed their Tornado radio network in the years prior to the cyclone, NZ Police were confident they had built in additional redundancy to their voice communications network through the use of narrowband channels. “Building a resilient radio network lies at the heart of successful operations for emergency services,” said Paul Reid, President of Ubiik Mimomax.”So far, our Tornado radio links have withstood earthquakes, intense rain events, heavy snowfall and hurricane-strength winds at sites around the world. Having engineered the radios for resilience, it is always gratifying to see their real-world performance matches our expectations.”
(Photo credit: Tess Brunton, RNZ).