Saudi Eastern Province

ASC provides early warning system

The I-Force is designed for applications that require high levels of sound pressure level output

American Signal Corporation (ASC), a manufacturer of mass notification, disaster warning, and emergency notification systems, has entered into the final implementation phases of its large-scale multi threat, multi channel early warning system in Saudi Arabia.

The system will be installed in the Eastern Province of the kingdom and it will help protect more than four million citizens from natural and man-made disasters, said a statement from the company.

ASC engineers recently met with Next Millennium Telecom Co (Nextel), the systems integrator deploying the Eastern Province Early Warning System in Saudi Arabia. Through a coordinated effort, ASC’s technologies will be set up by Nextel to create a first-alert mass notification system that protects and warns the province’s citizens, it said.

The initial contract for development of this system was awarded to ASC by the Ministry of Interior following a formal visit by officials to ASC›s US headquarters to personally witness performance tests.

Richard Roe, executive vice president at American Signal Corporation, said: “Our performance tests were clear indicators of quality, reliability and innovation for the Saudi Government.”

“And, after seeing the robust solutions we were able to offer on both hardware and software fronts, ASC earned yet another opportunity to prove itself on the global stage,” he said.

The system boasts 720 individual I-Force high-powered speaker arrays (HPSAs), running on the company’s NexGen RTU platform. I-Force HPSAs were chosen due to their patented non-re-entrant speaker design, which provides clear, crisp voice as well as a multitude of siren tones.

Managing the system is ASC’s CompuLert NexGen command and control software. The central command centre for the system is located in Dammam, the capital of the Province. A backup control centre running a hot standby IP-linked CompuLert NexGen server and software is located 25km away in Al Khobar. The system is designed to be managed completely from the primary command centre in Dammam or regionally through one of 13 regional control centres.