Alerts, Warnings, & Response to Emergencies | AWARE » General

Voluntary Event Must Carry: Where We Need To Go After Governor Must Carry

Richard Rudman — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:00:59 +0000

AWARE Forum has forged a new partnership with the Broadcast Warning Working Group (BWWG) and its blog, The EAS Forum. Below is the first of regular posts you will begin seeing on AWARE from alert and warning expert and EAS Forum author Richard Rudman. We are pleased to be sharing Richard’s content with you, and if you like what you see be sure to check out The EAS Forum for more.

In the Emergency Alert System (EAS) Notice of Inquiry (NOI) regarding proposed rule changes for EAS was the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) proposal for a so-called “Governor Must Carry” provision. This proposal was developed because of complaints that governors were not using EAS to tell traffic fleeing from events like Hurricane Ike that all highways were converted to head north. In Texas, instead of using EAS for the shuttle disaster, the governor convened a news conference. Other instances of failures to originate proper warnings are in the record.

During the Comment period on the FCC’s NOI, the Broadcast Warning Working Group (BWWG) and the National Alliance of State Broadcasting Associations (NASBA) both called for a better, more rational, event-centered warning approach, administered and managed by professionals.

Our premise was simply that emergencies are event driven. It made a lot of sense to us to trigger must-carry warnings based on risk and threat assessments by qualified emergency managers. This would of course include local offices of the National Weather Service as well as duly authorized state and operational area government warning centers. Basing must carry warnings on a governor or a designee appeared to us to simply not be good emergency management policy. As we explained it, it makes far more sense to have local and state EAS committees designate specific EAS event warnings as “must carry.” Our proposition can be expressed as Voluntary Event Must Carry (VEMC). This label may appear to be slightly oxymoronic, but it does address the quandary we face because the FCC can only require must carry EAS by broadcast and cable entities for Presidential Emergency Action Notification (EAN) messages.

On January 10 the FCC released their Fifth Report and Order on the EAS Rules. In that release they announced they threw out the governor must carry provision, their attempt in the NOI to get around their inability to mandate carriage of any local or state EAS non-test event codes. While this means broadcasters and cable system operators will not be required under the now revised FCC Rules to carry local and state warnings, the introduction in the EAS rules regarding the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) can bring us closer to getting event-driven warnings to people at risk. So, when CAP-enhanced EAS comes into being, can we create a “carrot” for broadcast and cable to want to volunteer, as well as a “carrot” for the emergency management community to want to originate?

I recently made presentations to an EAS Local Emergency Communications Committee (LECC) and one of the three California emergency management mutual aid regional coordination groups to outline VEMC. Making VEMC happen will require Operational Area emergency management to become certified to originate IPAWS OPEN messages, and broadcasters to work with their local weather service offices and their operational area emergency managers in order to agree on a short list of EAS event codes that directly affect life safety. Both groups reacted positively and understood the implicit “carrots”.

The goal for VEMC is to send a clear and strong message to broadcasters that those few life-safety codes should be broadcast – even if not specifically required under Part 11 as a public service.

Starting small, I propose that that VEMC list contain just a few codes:

(1) Codes for high risk, high probability weather life safety events based on local risk assessment and

(2) the EAS EVI and SPW and CEM codes[1].

Of these three codes, the CEM , coupled with IPAWS OPEN CAP messaging, can convey specific information not covered by EVI and SPW. CEM CAP messages can carry many specific directions to the public such as directives to boil water, curfew information, and realistic reassurance about response measures as the story of the emergency unfolds.

Yes, emergencies are stories, and effective warnings to a public at risk are the headlines for those stories. Just like stories in print, emergency management can garner a larger audience for their role in emergency response by creating timely and carefully crafted warning headlines. Stay tuned.

[1] The EAS has provisions for a number of event-specific three letter codes. EVI stands for Evacuate Immediately, SPW stands for Shelter In Place Warning, and CEM stands for Civil Emergency Message

Innovations in Alerting Series: Social Media in Emergency Management

Hal Grieb — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:17:34 +0000

During the month of September, AWARE will be hosting a series of posts from guest authors highlighting the five most significant innovations in the field of alerts and warnings in the past decade since 9/11. In this post, Hal Grieb, noted expert on social media and emergency management, discusses how social media has evolved to be such an important tool in the arsenal of public safety in the past ten years.

In the 10 years that have passed since the 9/11 tragedy, public safety agencies have witnessed many technological advancements that aid society. One such technology, which has pervaded many aspects of modern life, is social media—an advancement that has come to be so accepted in our society that it was formally added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in August 2011. Though government has made strides in using these new tools to interact with the public, adoption has been slow for the most part. However, moving forward, the public sector must be more proactive in interacting with citizens where they already reside.

The Emergence of Social Media

Modern society has witnessed many events that have given rise to social media. Ten years ago it was live broadcasts of distraught loved ones stapling requests for help and information on telephone poles and ad hoc bulletin boards in the moments after the 9/11 tragedy. In 2005, reliable information was collaboratively built by strangers on free websites like Wikipedia, helping shed light on response issues related to Katrina. Then in 2007, students demonstrated how easy Facebook made quick collaborative communication to accurately create a list of names impacted by the Virginia Tech shooter before it was officially released.

Social media was developed to virtually connect friends and families spread across various cities, states, and countries. In the early 2000s, most social media sites were first embraced by high school and college students moving on to their next phases of life. Now, those former students have graduated and moved into today’s societal fabric and modern workforce. The younger generations brought unique perspectives on how established communications such as email, instant chat, and discussion forums were good for niche communications but lacked a holistic approach. These basic tools each had certain limitations in how dynamic information could be shared with outside audiences or users in an open environment. Social media has helped fill the gaps older technology was limited by and brought forth newer advancements with geo-location tools and mobile device integrations. Naturally, these tools have offered a great deal of value for emergency managers and other public safety officials.

As I consider myself part of this tech savvy generation, I am thankful to the many early adopters in and around government, such as Brian Humphrey (LA Fire), John Shea (creator of FEMA’s social media campaigns), and W David Stephenson (government focused blogger), that helped inspire and pave the way for others in public safety as early as 2004.

The Voice Missing from Social Media

Today, as more people log onto social media in disasters they have noticed a very important group missing from the conversation. That group is government. How can any government, mandated to serve its citizens, not operate in the same venues of its citizens whether physical or virtual? The general population has proven social media to be a valuable tool in local and national events and tragedies. The sharing of information has been moved from telephone poles to social media, viewable by millions and answered by strangers in real time. It has given solace to grieving survivors, united distant friends and families, and helped organize strangers offering help across nations. As each day passes it is becoming harder and harder for government to turn away from their citizens’ use of social media.

I am thankful to see that in the past 10 years social media has not only reached general population adoption but also beginning to reach further in government adoption. Society and public safety holds no place for rigid government communications and slow technological adaptation. Public safety agencies are finally realizing the benefits and need to understand social media as a new tool that helps them respond to the priorities of Life Safety, Incident Stabilization, and Property / Economic conservation. Since late 2009, more governments have begun creating official social media accounts. Government agencies and many public safety organizations such as FEMA, American Red Cross, the National Weather Service, as well as various state and local governments have successfully employed social media in responses to earthquakes, tornados, and other disasters, proving that social media has real value to public service. It isn’t just a website for kids anymore.

Reactive is Out… Proactive is in

Though governments have made progress in adopting social media, innovation in the public sector cannot stop here. Now more than ever, public safety responders and government leaders need to become persistent and vocal change agents, constantly dissatisfied with current technologies and demanding improvements in their agency’s technological toolbox. In times of emergency, public safety agencies cannot afford to wait around, hoping their stakeholders communicate with them on outdated technological platforms.

Public service is best delivered to the public where they communicate, interact, and reside. And the public does all these things on social media. Since 9/11, technology has adapted to society’s needs in disasters and highlighted the fact that proactive communication is in and reactive communication is out.

Innovations in Alerting Series: Emergency Notification Systems

Courtney Cunningham — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:50:17 +0000

During the month of September, AWARE will be hosting a series of posts from guest authors highlighting the five most significant innovations in the field of alerts and warnings in the past decade since 9/11. In this post, Courtney Cunningham, Senior Associate for the Lafayette Group and a former external affairs officer for Chatham County, Georgia, discusses the significance of local emergency notification systems.

In a post 9-11 world, emergency notification systems have become a popular technological advancement for emergency response personnel to communicate with the public. The last decade has seen an insurgence of developers offering low-cost solutions to reach every resident within a specific jurisdiction. But do these systems truly work and are they reaching the specific populations that need the emergency information most?

Benefits of a Community Notification System

While working as an Emergency Management Specialist for a coastal emergency management agency (EMA) in Georgia, I was responsible for developing an external affairs program for a county with a population of approximately 260,000. The community had access to a community notification system (CNS) which was purchased from a private vendor and the cost split between the county, city and police department. Here were some of the benefits of this solution:

The cost of the system was minimal. This particular vendor was new and contracted with the community in exchange for advertising for the first several months. The only major cost was the purchase of the digital phonebook from the local telephone company.
The software for the CNS was very user-friendly. It allowed emergency response personnel to draw a polygon around an area that needed alerts, push a button and the message was sent to every landline in the designated area.
The system wasn’t just a “robocall.” When residents received a message, they had the option to choose that they had heard the message, have it repeated or, if no one answered the phone, the CNS would leave a message on the answering machine and attempt to call later.
The system helped with the rapid activation of emergency support groups. County departments such as the local EMA were able to set up Emergency Support Function (ESF) partner groups that could be contacted if an emergency should arise and the Emergency Operations Center was activated. The CNS saved the EMA time and manpower hours with just a few clicks on a computer and ESF groups were activated.

…And the System’s Limitations

While it was an excellent resource for reaching the public and ESF partners, several issues needed to be overcome:

The system did not support languages other than English. Primarily, the County had to take into consideration that not everyone would be able to understand English, and this particular notification system did not allow residents to choose to hear the message in a different language, not to mention residents who may have had special medical needs such as hearing impairments.
Cell phones were not included in the call list. When the County purchased the phonebook from the telephone company and downloaded it to the system, it did not include residents’ cell phone numbers. Considering that an increasing number of Americans do not have a landline telephone, these residents could be left out of the notification service.
Residents could add their cell phone numbers to the CNS list—but very few did. Residents could receive CNS messages on their cellphones by registering their cell phone numbers through the County website. But as anyone who works in emergency response knows, the likelihood of residents voluntarily signing themselves up to receive notifications from the government is low. Even with the best public outreach campaign, very few residents chose to visit the County’s website to opt in.
New subscriptions meant higher costs. Each time numbers were added to the CNS database, an additional cost was tacked on to the annual fee.

The Biggest Barriers: Training and Processes

Another major hindrance to the CNS was the training offered to learn how to use and manage the software. Unfortunately, territorial issues arose and only a select few were initially trained to use the system. When it came time to send out a test message, it was discovered that many of the individuals trained in the software were no longer available to input alerts. The County had to pay for an additional training session with the developer, and the cycle began again.

Moreover, Southerners have an interesting way of pronouncing certain words such as streets names and island names. (I can say this, as I am a Southern myself.) The CNS did not recognize this difference and therefore whoever was entering the alert into the software would have to remember to misspell the word so that residents would understand the message. For instance, Houston Street is not pronounced like the city in Texas, but rather as “How-Stun.”

The Ideal Solution: Integrate Tools for Wider Impact

While the CNS may have had its issues, emergency response partners understand that this is just one tool in a rather growing arsenal of public outreach techniques. As the Public Affairs Officer for the County EMA, I realized that the CNS was great when used in conjunction with the EMA’s email distribution list, Twitter alerts, Facebook, EMA website, brochures, community presentations and media partnerships. I always wondered if there would ever be a way to link all of these technologies together and only realized recently that developments are underway through the IPAWS Aggregator—a technology that not only will save an enormous amount of time but also will alleviate stress levels in the local EMAs. Hopefully, when all of these technologies, including the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS), are linked together, local EMAs will be able to distribute lifesaving information to the people who need it most – our families, friends and neighbors.

Innovations in Alerting Series: The CMAS Users Trial – Other Observations

Stephen Rea — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:00:14 +0000

During the month of September, AWARE will be hosting a series of posts from guest authors highlighting the five most significant innovations in the field of alerts and warnings in the past decade since 9/11. This post is the final of three on the CMAS Users Trial conducted in San Diego, authored by Stephen Rea, Senior Emergency Services Coordinator of the County of San Diego (California) Office of Emergency Services.

As part of a coordinated effort with Sprint and the California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA), The County of San Diego Office of Emergency Services (OES) had a unique opportunity to become the first in the nation to test the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS, also known as the Personalized Local Alerting Network, or PLAN) on a large scale. During the October 2010 trial, over 50 imminent threat and AMBER alerts were generated. These alerts were received by 120 mobile phones preloaded with CMAS software. Our intent was to put PLAN through its paces by simulating large and small disasters ranging from earthquakes and tsunamis to hazardous materials spills.

While our technical partners, Sprint and Alcatel Lucent, were able to gain some knowledge about the mechanics and technical specifications of the implementation, the Office of Emergency Services concentrated on the message. We were able to experience, in part, what it was like to be a local alerting agency working with the PLAN network.

Designing Trial Scenarios

The first part of the process of creating a PLAN alert involves choosing from pre-designated lists for “response type” and “category”. Response type choices include Shelter, Evacuate, Prepare, Execute, Monitor, and Assess. Category choices were Geo, Met, Safety, Security, Rescue, Fire, Health, Env, Transport, Infra, and CBRNE.

To come up with our 50 trial scenarios, we held a brainstorming session to try to match up natural and human-made disasters with the predefined lists. For most choices we had no problem imagining disasters that fit into these categories, but we did run into one category type that gave us problems. We could not find a good use for the predefined FEMA category of “Rescue.” We thought about trapped miners or earthquake victims, but couldn’t come up with a good scenario. Under what circumstances would we notify residents of a rescue, what would we communicate to them, and would this qualify as an emergency?

One of our attempted scenarios during the trial was to create a geofence. This would be the process of setting up a geographic barrier using the map in the PLAN software. This would send an alert when a user entered a quarantined area, for example, if we were to identify an area around a damaged nuclear power plant, we could use a PLAN message to warn people to stay away before they entered a dangerous area.

Limitations in Geofencing

While this was technically possible using the software, there was no pre-designated PLAN response type for “Avoid the Area.” The nearest categories were “Evacuate” or “Assess”. Neither one was a perfect fit. Another discovery involved the message duration. The system limited the maximum duration of an alert to 24 hours. If an emergency manager needed a longer duration, another message was required.

I am sure many of these issues that we have identified will be solved with training or with the next generations of the PLAN system. We look forward to these advances and were honored to have a small part in the development of this important system.

Innovations in Alerting Series: The CMAS Users Trial – Alerting a Target Area

Stephen Rea — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:00:44 +0000

During the month of September, AWARE will be hosting a series of posts from guest authors highlighting the five most significant innovations in the field of alerts and warnings in the past decade since 9/11. This post is the second of three on the CMAS Users Trial conducted in San Diego, authored by Stephen Rea, Senior Emergency Services Coordinator of the County of San Diego (California) Office of Emergency Services.

Geotargeting in the CMAS Trial

The FCC rules for carriers specify that they must “transmit any Alert Message that is specified by a geocode, circle, or polygon to an area no larger than [a county].” As San Diego County is roughly the same size as Connecticut, our tests attempted to target a more granular level.

Not surprisingly, we found that the best area for targeting was in our less populated East County; cell towers were spread out and overlapping coverage was not as frequent. Notifying an isolated community worked fairly well. Broadcasting to the heavily populated coastal cities was a greater challenge. Due to the large concentration of overlapping cell towers and wide coverage areas, targeting a small coastal community wasn’t realistic.

The map provides a view of San Diego’s North County. This example shows the target area in light blue and cell tower activation in dark blue.

CAPTION: The map below provides a view of San Diego’s North County. This example shows the target area in light blue and cell tower activation in dark blue.

For example, one of our tests attempted to target Petco Park, San Diego’s premiere baseball stadium. The tiny four block polygon mapped out around the park touched a large number of cell tower coverage areas. This resulted in cell towers activating from the Mexican border, north to La Jolla and east to Chula Vista, over 200 square miles of notification area. With the challenge of describing the area affected in 90 characters, that this type of notification was not practical. (See the previous post on our challenge with the 90-character limit.)

We learned that CMAS targeting lies between an EAS broadcast (county wide) and AlertSanDiego, our reverse 911 system (neighborhood wide) for geographic accuracy.

Innovations in Alerting Series: The CMAS Users Trial – The 90-Character Challenge

Stephen Rea — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:48:54 +0000

During the month of September, AWARE will be hosting a series of posts from guest authors highlighting the five most significant innovations in the field of alerts and warnings in the past decade since 9/11. This post is the first of three on the CMAS Users Trial conducted in San Diego, authored by Stephen Rea, Senior Emergency Services Coordinator of the County of San Diego (California) Office of Emergency Services.

Testing the 90-character limit

One of the first standards we tested was the text message broadcast limit of 90 characters. There had been discussions on whether this was enough space to develop an informative message. Our objective was to develop messages that would quickly describe the type of disaster, area affected, recommended action, and advice to monitor media for more information; all the while avoiding the inclusion of a web link. While it was a challenge to script a 90 character alert, we were able to meet the minimum requirements. Some examples of our trail alerts included:

Wild Fire in the Julian and Santa Ysabel area.
Evacuate now.
Monitor media for more info.

and

Toxic air quality near Mission Bay.
Remain indoors. Turn off AC. Monitor local news.

Overall, this was a success.

Character limits and AMBER Alerts

However when experimenting with AMBER Alerts, we quickly realized that we didn’t have enough space to provide sufficient descriptive information as recommended by the Department of Justice’s AMBER Alert Guidelines. A description of the physical characteristics of the child and suspect, along with the make and model of the vehicle being used followed by a contact number for the investigating jurisdiction’s law enforcement department was not realistic using 90 characters.

The good news is that through our conversation with FEMA, we have learned that PLAN messages for AMBER alerts will be created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Because of their experience with AMBER alerts, they report that they will not have much of an issue with the 90 character limitation.

Public needs for more alert information

If the goal of PLAN is to alert and motivate people to seek further information, the trial proved that the 90 character limitation works fine, but it is not well suited as the sole information source for disaster notification messages. These messages would require more thorough descriptions of a disaster.

New blog series: Top innovations in alerts and warnings in the past decade

Daniel Honker — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:52:48 +0000

In the ten years following September 11, 2001, there have been notable advancements in how the American public is alerted about emergency events. New technologies and modes of communication have been met with the development of innovative approaches to connect critical information with those in the public who need to know. Our friends at the Emergency Management blog recently highlighted a few areas of progress in public safety notification systems. Beginning this week, the AWARE team will be launching a series of blogs highlighting the past decade’s top five innovations in the field of alerts and warnings.

We are excited that each post will be penned by a guest author with on-the-ground experience to shed light on how these innovations have changed the way public safety officials notify the public.

This series kicks off this Tuesday, 9/13, with a multi-part discussion of San Diego (California) County’s tests of commercial mobile alerts. And as always, we welcome your comments on each post during this series. Which innovation has made the biggest impact on emergency alerting capabilities? Are there any innovations we missed? Stay tuned…

Photo courtesy of Flickr user sffoghorn.

Earthquake aftermath drawing more questions than answers

Daniel Conway — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:06:26 +0000

This afternoon an earthquake hit the National Capital Region. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was half a mile deep. Shaking was felt at the White House and all over the East Coast, as far south as Chapel Hill, N.C. Parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were evacuated. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

While no injures have been reported, the impact has caused many public and private sector services to shut down. From public transportation to cell phone services to musems and office buildings, the aftermath of the quake is drawing plenty of questions on how alert messages were issued and why some alert messages took 20-30 minutes to reach the public.

In the coming days, the AWARE team will be speaking with alerts and warnings stakeholders in the NCR region to examine why certain communities had more knowledge about the aftermath of the quake than others. As we continue to post links to information and answer many of your questions, we welcome your insights and information sharing.

Social Media: Real Time Updates during Hurricane Season

Daniel Conway — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:45:06 +0000

Directing the public’s attention is essential in times of hurricanes and tropical storms – the public expects authoritative, timely, clear information. For officials, a chief priority for communicating with the public before, during, and after an emergency, is to alert and warn.

Knowing that the public uses social media to receive alerts and warnings information, government organizations are turning to social media as a primary public communication tools. This practice is heavily adopted by the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Social media enables citizens to access and receive information tacking the path of the storm over large geographic locations from their computer or wireless devices. According to NHC, Topical Storm Don is expected to make landfall in Texas and go ashore between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, and then track across the southern tip of Texas before entering the Mexican state of Coahuila. As of July 29^th, tropical storm warnings and watches are posted from Galveston Island to the Mexican border.

While following the storm, having the ability to send real-time messages to targeted audiences is essential for alerts and warnings officials. For citizens along Don’s path, this is important because messages about flood warnings, disruptions with utilities, and breakdowns in transportation, will vary across geographies.

The capabilities and benefits of social media are changing relationships between governments and citizens like never before. During this hurricane season, AWARE is encouraging readers to share insights and best practices on how social media is contributing to improved situational awareness. As always, your thoughts and experiences are welcome.

National Weather Services (NWS) Forum on Wireless Weather Services

Sukumar Dwarkanath — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:52:38 +0000

I recently attended a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) forum in Bethesda on June 28 – the purpose of the meeting was to gather information in order to help NWS to formulate a strategy for its role in future wireless weather services. The meeting included NWS partners, across public and private sectors and was a great opportunity to learn more about NWS’ priorities and initiatives.

The slides from the event are available here: https://apps.weather.gov/partners/presentations.php

The NWS plans to experimentally produce Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) v1.2 Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) profile messages by fall 2011. See the press announcement here.

NWS has set up a new Wiki for online documentation that includes a documentation page and a collaborative discussion page for each CAP element that NWS plans to produce.

https://wiki.citizen.apps.gov/nws_developers

There was also considerable discussion of CMAS, including how the geo-targeting capability would help with the problem of ‘over-alerting’; folks in the audience also expressed concerns over the 90 character limit of CMAS messages.