The creation of 6 officers from Alor Setar Fire and Rescue has now emerged as the winner of the Public Sector Prime Innovation Award (AIPSA) 2023, through their creation called the Audio Frequency Interceptor System (AFIS).
Through this system, it allows emergency vehicles such as fire engines, ambulances, police and so on to use it to intercept the radio frequency of vehicles in front – and further inform about the presence of emergency vehicles behind.
This system is very useful when in a traffic jam, and if a vehicle has the radio on loudly and does not hear the sound of an emergency vehicle siren. With this step, the radio broadcast can be intercepted and the vehicle in front can know about the emergency.
This AFIS system is said to be usable at long distances, but it is currently optimized for use around 200 meters away. The use of AFIS is also seen to be able to reduce the targeted response period from 10 minutes to 8 minutes.
This technology has similarities with the system, EVAM which automatically slows down the sound of the radio when hearing an ambulance siren. This technology was developed in 2017 by KTH Royal Institute of Technology students in Sweden which is based on RDS (Radio Data System) technology that already exists in radios.