Private Sector Roles are Expanding for Public Alerts and Warning

The continuing backdrop of homeland security threats – crossing a broad spectrum of contingencies from acts of terrorism to natural disasters to other human-made hazards (accidental or intentional) – highlight the importance of timely and effective warnings at the national, state and local levels. The ultimate goal is to develop an all-hazards warning capability, encompassing weather warnings, AMBER Alerts, and any number of local and regional emergencies.

Technological advances in communications media – broadcast and telecommunications – have provided opportunities for truly enhanced, integrated public alert and warning capabilities. The range of private sector systems and networks that can potentially participate in the public warning mission is dramatically expanding, with interoperability increasingly being driven by and acceptance of standards-based approaches.

In the area of public alert and warning, the interoperability challenge is being tackled at a diverse level. At the Federal level, the standards challenge involves an array of players, including FEMA (which has principle authority over the national level Emergency Alert System, or EAS), the National Weather Service, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In addition, the search for a truly integrated public alert and warning system has involved a much broader array of private sector actors than ever before. While traditional broadcast EAS players retain their invaluable role at the center of the system, the playing field has been expanded to include mobile phones, text messaging devices, computers, digital signage/ electronic billboards, and much more.

These “new” public warning players have become deeply involved in the process of developing a next-generation EAS though a number of venues. One such forum is the FCC’s Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee (CMSAAC)1. The CMSAAC mission is to develop recommendations on technical standards and protocols to facilitate the ability of Commercial Mobile Service (CMS) providers to voluntarily transmit emergency alerts to their subscribers. The Committee consists of 40 representatives of state and local governments; communications service providers; vendors; commercial and noncommercial broadcasters; individuals with special needs; and other technical representatives.

A key area of discussion between the private sector and government is the question of open standards and open architectures. The use of open standards and open architectures represent major new directions in the evolution of the EAS, and the next generation of emergency notification technologies currently being deployed are based on key open standards such as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). CAP and EDXL emerged as a result of coordination between industry and government to formulate an open, non-proprietary digital message format for all types of alerts and notifications.

Another shift in private sector participation in EAS can be seen in the growing role of the public broadcast community. Perhaps the highest profile example of this new paradigm can be seen in efforts to upgrade the national-level EAS. FEMA and the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) have been working with SpectraRep (www.spectrarep.com), PBS and local public broadcasters to develop an enhanced national-level EAS capability, using local public television digital infrastructure and the PBS satellite interconnection system. This FEMA system – called “DEAS” or “Digital Emergency Alert System” – leverages interoperable technologies and is being designed and deployed with an eye towards open standards, such as use of the Common Alerting Protocol. DEAS is part of a broader FEMA system called IPAWS – the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.

At the state and local level, there are a range of efforts to bring CAP-based all-hazards warning technologies into the public alerting arena. FEMA is working to provide a pilot of local alert origination capabilities in nine states, using tools like SpectraRep’s AlertManager™ and ActiveAccess™ (www.activeaccess.com). AlertManager is an end-to-end system for the origination and dissemination of EAS messaging, transported via satellite and DTV multicast data transport, as well as via the Internet. AlertManager enables public alert and warning information to be sent to the public via broadcast radio and television, cable, satellite radio, cell phones, pagers, computer desktops, and electronic signage. The system is designed to be interoperable with other emerging CAP-based systems, like DEAS and NOAA’s Hazcollect. ActiveAccess is a powerful desktop application that delivers EAS, Weather Service weather alerts and bulletins, news crawls, weather radar information, and preparedness information to the general public, government agencies, critical infrastructure and businesses.

Systems like DEAS and AlertManager give the “new EAS” the ability to provide much more than a brief audio message and a modest onscreen crawl. The capabilities are now available for dissemination of live or recorded video, multiple simultaneous languages, maps, graphics, resources for the hearing-impaired, and more. And since these systems are based on the open Common Alerting Protocol, the same message that triggers multimedia over broadcast television and radio can also activate a broad array of geographically targeted warning systems. Use of open standards will expand the array of private sector participants in the public warning mission, extending the public warning ecosystem to include broadcasters, telecommunications companies, media outlets, software providers, device manufacturers, and any other number of IP-based systems.

** This article originally appeared in a recent edition of “The Insider,” a Publication by COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance. Please click now to view this story on Page 4.
 

More information about SpectraRep can be found at: www.spectrarep.com

More information about ActiveAccess can be found at: www.activeaccess.com

Warning, Alert and Response Network Act enacted on October 13, 2006. SpectraRep was appointed to this committee by the FCC Commissioner.