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Picture of a mast in a snowy hilly landscape
Picture of a mast in a snowy hilly landscape © STRABAG Infrastructure & Safety Solutions GmbH

Client
State of Vorarlberg

Place of performance
Vorarlberg, Austria

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AWIS - Alarm, Warning and Information System Vorarlberg

In order to replace the existing system with a modern and faster alerting network - in which new media, communication paths and modern display options can also be used - the new and highly modern AWIS Vorarlberg (Alarm, Warning and Information System Vorarlberg) alerting system was implemented and set up.

The communication between the central components and the infrastructure, as well as with the alerting terminals and alarm repeater, takes place via a distribution network (radio network), whose relay sites are connected through a microwave link network. A distinctive feature of this distribution network is that the downlink radio communication is also based on time-synchronized transmissions within a single frequency network.

In the second layer, the time-synchronized POCSAG transmissions of the alerting terminals take place. The siren terminals, monitoring receivers, and remote control units are also connected to the distribution network and receive their commands through it.

Parallel to the distribution network, all alarm terminals are redundantly connected via LTE (TCP/IP) as a fallback level. In addition to the alarm and information distribution function via the infrastructure, active network and function monitoring of the entire system is also carried out in parallel. Not only is the success of each alert (= time-synchronized POCSAG transmission throughout the entire network) actively monitored and evaluated, but all functional values and parameters of all locations are regularly queried and automatically checked.

Successful alerts are verified based on the reception acknowledgements from dedicated POCSAG monitoring receivers, which are installed throughout the country and connected to the alerting system.

Status values and operational parameters are continuously polled and evaluated in parallel with the alerting operations from all radio units (alerting terminals). Errors are logged and displayed in the central component, the alerting gateway, which is located in the control center.

Details of the implemented overall system

  • 2 redundant alarm servers, including system management and network monitoring (web client)
  • 18 distribution network relay sites, partly combined with alerting terminals and alarm repeater
  • 130 alarm repeater
  • 230 siren terminals, 145 of which are sirens only
  • 22 POCSAG control receiver
  • 159 alarm text terminals (all-in-one touch display for alarm text display and acknowledgement)
  • 16 telecontrol systems
  • Interfaces to external systems
  • Distribution network
  • Integration of the interfaces of the Federal Warning Center and the CAD system