[EAS] EAS monitoring sources

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 31 Aug 2016, Mike McCarthy wrote:
> I don't know about that time line Sean.  I've been involved at the WFO
> level since the late 80's and the local forecasters have always had the
> authority to issue short fuse products in my experience.

Yep. The important point isn't technology.

It doesn't need to take hours (or even tens of minutes) for EMA public 
information officials to craft a press release.  The NWS has been issuing 
short-fuse alerts and warnings extremely quickly for decades, using 
whatever technology existed at the time.

In the 1920's it added telegraph, in the 1950's it added AP/UPI teletypes,
in the 1970's it added weather radio (and EBS through the CPSC), in the 
1990's it added EAS and Internet..... (roughly, the weather bureau was 
probably using some things even earlier).  There was probably fax, 
e-mail, and other channels mixed in there.

The important thing wasn't the technology, but that the metreologist on 
duty can immediately issue public warnings without needing a lot of 
management approvals.  Pre-planning and scripting greatly speeds up the 
process.

Yes, PIO's can page local media and request them to send camera trucks 
over to the EOC for a press conference or send a FAX blast press release 
assuming there is someone on duty in the news room at that time.

> It is true the pre-scripted products came into play during the early
> 2000's.  And even more so when workstation AWIPS was deployed
> (2008-2010ish) in place of terminal based AFOS. The latest generation of
> AWIPS is light years better than the first generation replacing AFOS.
>
> But I see an apples to oranges distinction between local EMA and NWS in
> scope, scenario roles and responses.

There is never an exact match for anything.  But looking outside the box 
we sometimes put ourselves in, there are often good ideas from other sources.

EMA's really like Wireless Emergency Alerts, and several EMAs are spending 
a lot of money to buy CAP/IPAWS capable systems to use WEA.  In the past, 
EMAs didn't see a need to buy an EAS encoder.  But are now spending 
10-times the amount of money on WEA, SMS and telephone notification 
systems.

Since CAP/IPAWS also supports EAS in addition to WEA, although some EMAs 
sometimes don't realize they have EAS access, its an opportunity to 
improve both.