MANILA, Philippines -- A team of engineering students for De La Salle University (DLSU) in Bacolod won the top prize in this year's SWEEP contest sponsored by mobile operator Smart Communications.

The annual SWEEP (Smart Wireless Engineering Education Program) competition draws participants from college and universities nationwide. This year's theme revolves around creating mobile applications that aid preparation for natural disasters.

La Salle's winning project proposes the use of "cell broadcasting" in transmitting disaster warning to subscribers in a given area. Cell broadcasting s a common yet overlooked feature in mobile phones that can transmit short messages without a charge to the user, unlike SMS.

The team is composed of Delman Alagao, Francis Xavier Parcon, Kimwell Laluma, Paul Edward Alvarez and Mark Paolo Salada -- all of them senior BS Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) students at DLSU Bacolod.

The second and third prize, meanwhile, went to teams from Ateneo De Manila University. Both teams received P300, 000 and P150, 000, respectively.

Second prize was awarded to the project titled "Smart FAST", which proposes the use of SMS to collect and transmit data from sensors that determine flood levels in rivers and other bodies of water.

Third prize, meanwhile, went to another team from Ateneo, whose project called "Smart Guards" proposes the use of wireless services to track disease outbreaks in a particular area.

All 10 finalists exhibited their working prototypes during a two-day program held at SM Cebu over the weekend.

Four years after the first SWEEP contest was held, Mon Isberto, Smart's public affairs spokesperson, said the next round of competitions will increasingly focus on developing applications that run on wireless broadband.

"We try to gradually adapt the competition to the concept of Web 2.0," Isberto said, in an interview during the sidelines of the awarding ceremonies. "Before the schools were developing applications on GSM, we now want them to develop more specific applications that utilize wireless broadband."