The Philippines is prone to natural disasters due to its location. Philippines is surrounded by large bodies of water and facing the Pacific Ocean where 60% of the world's typhoons are made. One of the most devastating typhoons that hit the Philippines in 2013 was Typhoon Haiyan, or "Yolanda", that killed over 10,000 people and cost trillion pesos worth of properties and damage. It is also prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because it lies in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Other environmental hazards in the Philippines include global warming, pollution, climate change, landslides, deforestation, dynamite fishing, illegal logging, and illegal mining.

Kisha (記者, means “reporter”) is a system that allows people to report emergencies or environmental hazards in their location that works even without an Internet connection or cellular networks.

The system is specifically suitable in solving communication problems encountered in remote areas where immediate action is required.

• no Internet connection
• text message fails to send even after a lot of attempts
• phone calls and emergency calls are not reliable
• local households are far away from stores for reloading their SIM card
• stores for reloading are not available at late night
• No electricity/frequent power outages

Kisha allows a user to report an emergency which will notify the Monitoring Officer to take immediate action. The emergency report contains the following information:

• Level of urgency/damaged caused by the environmental hazard
• Type of emergency/environmental hazard
• Geolocation information (if using a smartphone/portable Kisha node)
• Registered user’s ID

There are two ways to send an emergency report, one is via a Kisha Mobile App, and the other one thru the Kisha node, a LoRa-integrated device.

Using Kisha Mobile App, users can submit the report via Internet if available through their smartphones and is suitable for urban areas where Internet is reliable.

Users can also submit a report via standalone Kisha nodes. It will have a display and controls that can be wall-mounted in every household and antennas installed outdoors.

Kisha nodes can also be used as a portable device but will require a smartphone or GPS module for its geolocation coordinates. They could pair their smartphone to the Kisha node via Bluetooth. It is great in areas where network coverage is very low. Using Kisha node will allow their report to be submitted via Kisha network.

Kisha nodes use LoRa transceivers for long range data communication. LoRa transceivers consume very little power making it ideal for battery-powered devices. Data transmission and reception can span from 2-5 km in urban areas and 7-15 km in rural areas. For the record, it reached 766 km that consumed 25 mW of power.

It is operating 169, 433, 868, and 915 MHz ISM bands which is available world wide. LoRa is license free, which means that anyone can set up their own network without the need for a permit to operate on the aforementioned frequencies. It has end-to-end AES-128 encryption for the security of data being transmitted and has a transmission method called low-power Chirp Spread Spectrum signals that are very difficult to detect and intercept.

The downside of using LoRa transceivers are that it uses more power to transmit data for very far destinations, but can be solved by installation of Kisha routers, which are Kisha nodes that act as extenders for relaying the data to and from the server. The maximum bandwidth for the data is 32 kbit/s and works best with “radio line-of-sight”, but also works on indoor environment.

The submitted report can then be plotted on the map for visualization and monitoring, with legends indicating the type of environmental hazard and level of urgency/damaged caused.

Kisha can also send notifications to users about weather updates by integrating NASA’s satellite data via cloud or via Kisha network, e.g. during a typhoon landfall, with evacuation procedures in case the area is at risk with flash floods and landslides.

Kisha can help local officials/government agencies to make better decisions on what to do, plan ahead to prevent or reduce the risks, respond to urgent concerns, perform rescue operations, etc.

Using Kisha can also be helpful in sea for communication with the fishermen and motor banca operators before, during, and after the threat done by the environmental hazards in sea.

It can also help researchers studying remote sensing for gathering data remotely with ease instead of going back and forth in the researched area for retrieving sensor data, especially in environmental hazard research in coastal areas or farms.

Fire departments can also perform inspections on places where fires are frequent.

The collected data from reports can be employed with data analysis and machine learning to predict environmental hazards that will occur on a certain period of time. It could help farmers and fishermen in decision-making on what and when to plant or fish.