CityNews – 8th January 2020, deputy commander of Chiang Mai provincial police unveiled a new channel to report about burning in open or forestry areas besides usual reporting to any police station, that is, a reporting via the application PODD which was designed to identify the locations of such fires.
Dr. of Vet. Med. Sakunrat Patamakaew, director of the project and the app, from Chiang Mai University, said that this app is designed for caring for the health of community people, focusing on intercepting signals of epidemic diseases as well as pollution from wildfire. Through the app, one can inform authorities of burning so that they can take control the situation immediately. Following a two year development period, the app has been installed in many local administrative areas with about 8,000 PODD volunteers accross Chiang Mai who will be alerting authorities via the app. Besides customary mode of informing when one see fire in the open or forest areas by phoning 053-232019 and 053-112725 or hot-line 1362 (24 hours), volunteers can also download the app PODD both for android and IOS (searching by typing PODD).
