Heilongjiang, a province in northeastern China, is blessed with the country’s widest forest landscape. Natural and man-made forest fire prevention and control have always been a key factor in local ecological planning and management. Because of its unique geographical features, conventional analog radio systems fail to meet the communication needs of daily maintenance and emergency rescue. Carriers’ cellular networks offer poor coverage at the fringe of the forest and it gets even poorer into the depth of woodland. 

In order to optimize wildfire prevention and control, Heilongjiang provincial forest ministry turns to BelFone Communications for a reliable and efficient radio communications solution. Taking the geographical features, forest density and communication distance into full consideration, BelFone presented a DMR communications system, BelFone BMC Emergency Communications Solution, to facilitate daily maintenance work and emergency rescue, shall a bushfire strike. 

BelFone BMC Emergency Communications Solution enables the better informed first responders to brave the challenges of bushfires. This purpose-built, mission-critical system provides an extensive feature set that includes data management, real-time surveillance, personnel dispatching, multi-channel information transmission, emergency alert and more, to maximize field awareness and facilitate search and rescue work. The commander can have a real-time grasp of the whole field situation thanks to the integrated GIS map and make the most effective deployments. All terminals are IP68 rated water and dust proof, which is paramount as firefighters need to use water and dust to put out the fire. Accidental sprays from the hose won’t interfere with the communications. 

The 3+3+3 networking design of BMC System is flexible enough to adapt to different geographical layouts of different sites. Network nodes can be added or removed as the specific situation requires, which helps the system to handle the influx of any outside aid to achieve cross-department cooperation. Therefore, firefighters, EMS personnel and volunteers can quickly work together to evacuate residents and save lives. The fallback redundancies make the network more resilient. Even if the network of the top command center breaks down, the field command network remains intact and keeps going. Furthermore, to ensure 100% coverage, BMC includes backpack base stations and repeaters. Workers on the move can carry backpacks, which are able to connect automatically any terminal within their mobile coverage.

With BMC system in place, Heilongjiang forestry authority greatly improves the frontline connectivity for the maintenance staff and firefighters. Sound communication effectively brings down the frequency of fire breakouts and speeds up response to emergencies.