[EAS] CAP EAS Geography Problem

[David Turnmire]

Adrienne,
You raise two issues.  As to the first, Idaho is in the process of 
addressing it, so I'm not a 100% confident of the answer.  But in a 
nutshell, my understanding is that IPAWS will reject a message that 
specifies FIPS codes (or presumably polygons/shapes in cases where those 
are relevant) that fall outside of the jurisdictions covered by your MOU 
with FEMA.  That makes sense if you think about it.  Still, it is 
somewhat contrary to our experience pre-IPAWS.  There was, for instance, 
nothing technically keeping you and Idaho from originating alerts with 
Florida counties listed.  That would be inappropriate, but the EAS boxes 
wouldn't prohibit it.  RF coverage area would keep us from getting too 
carried away, but mostly our limitations were self imposed based upon 
"rules" and "policies" (such as state plans).

With CAP, now all of a sudden we don't have geographic constraints and 
RF coverage limits to limit how far our EAS alerts can be distributed.  
But, if we are using IPAWS, we ARE constrained by the software 
programming of the IPAWS system.  It simply won't allow us to originate 
messages with event codes or FIPS codes we aren't authorized to use.  Of 
course, most of us (all of us?) have border issues to deal with.  FEMA 
has told us we need to have written MOUs with the neighboring states 
regarding what each of us can do... and then to forward those to FEMA so 
that our MOU with them reflects those.  That is some more "hoops" to go 
through than we had to before, but not unreasonable ones.

All of that being said, I have received information in just the last 
week or two that makes me suspect something may have changed on the FEMA 
end.  I had originally thought that our MOU was exclusively for Idaho 
counties and thus was on our "do list" to fix as discussed above.  But 
the service we use for passing alerts to IPAWS informed us recently that 
they had initiated a software query of the IPAWS system a few weeks ago 
and that IPAWS indicated our COG was indeed authorized for the same 
non-Idaho counties as covered in our state plan.  But that as of this 
last week they again made such a query and found we were only authorized 
for Idaho FIPS codes.

At this stage, I don't know whether something changed at FEMA or if it 
was a case of faulty memory on the part of the company we are dealing 
with.  We'll sort that out.  But given your comments, I'm wondering 
whether indeed something may have changed recently in the FEMA 
programming.  If so... that could indicate a recent mistake on their 
part... or perhaps correcting a past mistake on their part that just 
happened to work out well for us in the past!

As to your second issue... I don't know where you got the idea that you 
have to use an all state code for RMTs (or other alerts?).  I am aware 
of no such requirement and indeed that wouldn't make any sense for the 
reasons you mention.  I know I personally issued an RWT last week for 
just East Idaho counties and that was forwarded fine by IPAWS.  We're 
still working out the software and procedure kinks on our end regarding 
originating alerts via IPAWS, but for quite some time we have been 
originating CAP messages direct to Idaho broadcasters, including RMTs.  
And... only a couple times a year do we issue RMTs with the "All Idaho" 
code.  Due to our cross border issues with Washington, the other 10 
months of the year, our RMTs are limited to a smaller portion of the 
state and that has worked fine.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your comments on that, as you said 
something about the state division of emergency Management being 
involved with your January test.  My point above was dealing with the 
technical capabilities and federal regulations.  I certainly have no 
problem with a state level RMT being issued for the whole state and it 
may in fact serve a useful purpose depending on your state's needs.  In 
Idaho's case, two times a year we have what we refer to as a "statewide" 
RMT... but in fact it includes not just the "All Idaho" code, but also a 
few Washington, Oregon, and Montana codes as well.  In fact, one of 
those RMTs is actually originated by emergency management across the 
border in Spokane WA.

There is one point that should be mentioned in passing.  The decoder 
boxes themselves are NOT consistent in their understanding of what an 
"All state" FIPS code means.  The owners of a given brand of decoder box 
need to know the eccentricities of their particular box and program it 
accordingly.  Some boxes treat the "All State" code exactly the way they 
do for a county FIPS code. In those cases, if they receive an "all 
Nevada" FIPS code and the only code they have programmed in their 
decoder is for Clark County, they'll ignore that alert.   Other boxes 
(as I recall, the SAGE is like this), would recognize that Clark County 
is part of Nevada, and thus it would pass an alert with the "All Nevada" 
FIPS code.  Essentially, the broadcaster owning the former type of box 
has to explicitly add the "All Nevada" FIPS code to the list of codes to 
forward, where as the owners of the latter type of boxes shouldn't.  I 
hope at some point in the future the FCC clearly defines how they want 
decoders to respond to the all-state codes, so that there isn't any 
confusion on this point.

Dave

On 1/20/2014 6:20 PM, Adrienne Abbott wrote:
> Bill--
> My question is not about the national RWT that FEMA issues every Monday.
> It's about local EAS tests and activations issued by local and state
> emergency managers. We receive the FEMA RWT just fine, but apparently if an
> Emergency Manager wants to issue a test like the January RMT for the Western
> Nevada/Eastern California EAS Operating Area (Nevada has three Operating
> Areas and they overlap parts of 4 states), he/she can only issue the test
> for the Nevada counties and not the California counties, which means the
> California licensed stations in the Western Nevada/Eastern California Op
> Area don't get the CAP version of the test. California, at least the
> counties east of the Sierra Crest, do not have access to CAP technology yet.
> The stations will still receive the OTA version of the test complete with
> the test audio but the TV stations and cable providers won't get the CAP
> version with the specific test message.
>
> The second wrinkle in this "hairball" is that I'm told the January RMT which
> the state Division of Emergency Management is supposed to issue should just
> be coded for "All Nevada" rather than coded for each of the 17 counties in
> Nevada and that's a problem. A statewide test is fine but we don't have
> statewide emergencies or disasters. Our Operating Areas don't overlap, no
> broadcast signal reaches from one area to another. Normally, each Operating
> Area runs its own RMT schedule. And activations for one area don't usually
> apply to other areas. For example, if there's a wildland fire and homes in
> an area of Reno, which is Washoe County, are being evacuated, the EAS EVI
> should not be run in the Las Vegas area which would happen if the "All
> Nevada" FIPS code was programmed into everyone's EAS unit. I don't know if
> the programming in the new EAS units can be set to tailor specific Locator
> Codes for each Event Code.
>
> I don't know if these problems are manufacturer-specific. We have Sage,
> DASDEC, Trilithic, TFT and a couple of Gorman Redlich units here. They all
> seem to respond the same way to the use of the "All Nevada" FIPS code. When
> our state and local agencies first began using CAP last summer I was getting
> complaints that tests meant for the Western Nevada Op Area were received in
> the Southern Nevada Op Area. I can only imagine what's going to happen this
> summer during fire season.
>
> Adrienne Abbott
> Nevada EAS Chair
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
> Behalf Of William Eaton
>
> Just a question  to resolve my curiosity demon, so take pity on the
> ignoorant.....In Fl. our state EAS plan assigns the LP1,2 & alternate
>
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