[EAS] Fwd: [ChicagolandSkywarn] WEA Enabled Phones to Receive Emergency Messages

[Ed Czarnecki]

Regarding mobile carrier opt-out of CMAS, frankly, the mobile industry
lobbied a very good position in the WARN act.  They not only can opt out,
but they (companies, officers and directors) are waived from any indemnity
or liability from participating in CMAS.  That is not a criticism, per se,
that is merely an acknowledgement that the mobile industry's government
affairs folks and industry association were effective in getting their
position across.  Forcing mobile carrier participation would literally take
another act of Congress.

User opt out will likely evolve as the CMAS/WEA alerting apps evolve.  Not
sure if Al Kenyon is reading this, but does FEMA has a list of the event
codes that are most likely to be supported by CMAS?  EAN, TOR, TSW, CAE, EVI
... 

Regarding university/school district officials, my understanding is that
they would not be eligible to connect to IPAWS directly.  For one reason,
rarely would a campus official be in a position of issuing an EAS alert to
the general population.  (Though admittedly there are many college towns
where the campus pop outnumbers the gen pop by 2-1 or more!  But EAS/mass
public warning is not the role of a campus security official - that falls to
local/county/state government administration.

A question would be whether there could be a mutual aid agreement between
the university and the city/county officials to forward a qualified alert
into IPAWS.  

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Mike Benonis
Emergency Messages

I don't see any advantage to forcing consumer devices to monitor broadcast
sources for emergency information (be it AM, FM, TV, or NOAA).  As has been
pointed out, these signals are all local to an area--so a phone, for
instance, would need to have a database for LP/NOAA stations to monitor.
This would of course also draw more from the battery.

I like how the current CMAS system is set up, save for the part where
cellular carriers can opt out.  I think they should be required to
participate in the same way that Broadcasters must participate in EAS.  I
also think users should not be able to opt out of critical alerts, including
Tornado warnings.  However, because of the different nature of cellular
devices compared to broadcast, it will be necessary to have some way of
managing the type and frequency of alerts pushed out to avoid an onslaught
of messages to users that are not relevant.

One other thought--in areas with unique emergency needs, there needs to be a
way for nonstandard public safety agencies to register to be able to push
alerts via CMAS.  I am thinking in particular about University environments
(and mine in particular), but I could see others as well.  This may already
be possible based on what Ed has said about the registration procedure but
I'm not 100% sure.

I think much of this has already been voiced today but I thought it was
worth stating again.

Best regards,

Mike Benonis
Transmitter Engineer, WUVT-FM
Graduate Assistant, Wireless @ VT
KI4RIX

On 16 May 2012, at 16:08 , Eric Adler wrote:

> I don't think relying on the user/listener is sane or proper for an
emergency messaging implementation.  If we were relying on the user, s/he
could have his address programmed into his/her phone and network based
messaging could be used.  The major draw to having FM appears to be that,
while phones move, FM is always (relatively) locally originated.  
> 
> I was traveling last summer and away from any familiar stations for a
number of days, in a part of the country that I'd never even visited before,
I didn't know what was on the FM dial other than the music station I found
to keep myself sane on the road; it is highly unlikely for someone to become
aware of what station to tune to for emergency information in a relatively
short period of time.  I live in an area that was hit with natural disaster
this past fall and folks still don't seem to agree 100% on what station is
best to tune to for their emergency information needs.  I think when
designing emergency notification, one needs to think about someone who just
"appeared" and has minimal knowledge of the area; an airline passenger
traveling who is stopped at an unfamiliar airport for a layover, awaiting
his/her next flight, for a more practical example.  
> 
> I think a better course of action might be some sort of alerting tone (or
perhaps a subcarrier?) that notified of availability of messaging.  NOAA
would, of course, be a nice addition to phones... perhaps there could be
stations that volunteer to rebroadcast their local NOAA NWS NWR station in
an emergency and the (list of) frequency(-ies) could be encoded in NOAA's
EAS activation?
> 
> Just some thoughts...
> 
> Eric

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