[EAS] Voluntary Local EAS Carriage: Can We All Take Two Steps Forward?

[Richard_Rudman]

Sean raises a good point about resolving the CAP polygon issue in light of the reality of EAS interrupting all the coverage area for broadcast and cable entry points. 

Here is how I propose this be addressed:

1. Agree on ground rules for emergency management and NOAA/NWS EAS activation for EAS codes that each LECC puts in their Plan. Washington State has a set of such ground rules that the BWWG will put up on the EAS Forum soon. Ground rules should be based on the reality (as Sean rightly points out) that an EAS event is going to interrupt all listeners/viewers in the coverage area.

2. Put in each LECC Plan a review process with emergency management and NOAA/NWS for each activation. Some LECC's already do this. I suggest all should so that.

The point is that while NOAA/NWS and the emergency management community will be able to constrain a warning area in CAP with a polygon, they must always remember that broadcast/cable EAS has no way to take polygons into account. In the future "out-of-band" EAS will allow CAP polygons to be parsed properly -- without overriding the main program. A review process will help them remember if they forget.

Richard Rudman
The BWWG

On Feb 23, 2012, at 8:27 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:

> For these messages to be well received by the audience, it will need to be relevant to a large part of the audience in the entire EAS operational area.