[EAS] New EAS Forum posting: A vision for what to do now that the FCC has eliminated the GMC

[Richard_Rudman]

Sean/Everyone:

I would submit that we did pay a lot of attention to the two issues you mentioned in the reports issued during the short life of the Partnership for Public Warning, Inc. (PPW).

The basic premise the 17 founding Trustees for PPW started from was that the U.S. did not have a national warning policy after September 11. We started our deliberations by coming up with a definition of what a warning should be as a template for our work, and so we could all agree on a common goal. 

While we also brought CAP into existence because we also lacked an open, non-proprietary protocol that could be used to help formulate warnings for all types of dissemination systems, we still do not have a true national warning policy based on the "policy objective" for warnings as Sean puts it, of issuing, as I define it as -- timely messages delivered through multiple means and paths so people at risk can take better protective actions to preserve their life and property. That, we thought, was a a key policy objective we, and most people could agree on.

It is my hope that achieving a national consensus on a warning policy objective could be a primary focus of the stakeholder partnership described in the bill Sen. Collins from Maine is sponsoring. I believe a common goal for that stakeholder group might be start from the definition we came up with in PPW for what a warning is. The premise that better warnings will help emergency managers get through the response phase of an emergency better and faster might also be factored in.

All the PPW reports are archived online. I have mentioned the link on this site numerous times. If anyone has joined recently, the PPW archive site is at:

http://www.ppw.us/ppw/index.html

Richard Rudman
 

On Jan 17, 2012, at 11:53 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:

>1. What should be the policy objectives that determine the technical 
>objectives for coordinated emergency public information and warning 
>systems?

>2. Is a coordinated system still needed?