[EAS] Cell Phone Warning Failure

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

Very true, Sean... in fact, we added a function to a telephone-dialer alerting application at Contra Costa County in CA that let us preview how many phone calls alerting a specified geographic area would entail, and I recall referring to it frequently.  We were counting from our reversed-911 database, but a dip into Census data wouldn't be hard either.  

OTOH, as you point out, there's not a lot of incentive for origination tool providers to add functionality to what's often already an over-complicated process.  (Much of that complexity, in my experience, springs from the vendors trying to extend IPAWS functionality onto their existing mass-notification products.  It would be much cleaner if they just did a simple CAP origination and then enabled their notification technology to act on a CAP input, but where's the profit in that?)

Sadly, government tends to get the bulk of its knowledge of technology from its vendors, so their understanding tends to be skewed toward what's the vendors are selling.  We don't train emergency managers or public safety folks in how to do warning, and that needs to change.

Meanwhile, just got off the phone with a chap with the RadioDNS system in London.  Apparently it's caught on in Europe as a way to display album art on hybrid radio receivers.  Additionally it appears to provide a way to supplement radio alerting with maps and other details.  Some of the hybrid radios even have GPS capability, which would allow program interruptions to be limited to listeners in the actual hazard area.  This fellow said he's in conversation with Australian broadcasters about that already for their fast-moving brushfire threat.

And then I read an "op ed" article forecasting slow adoption for the ATSC 3 DTV standard that's been touted as a way to get broadcast TV onto mobile devices.  This is what "convergence" looks like, I guess... fits and starts, and new ideas coming in from left field. (<http://www.tvtechnology.com/atsc3/0031/latest-us-broadcast-standard-will-founder-on-mobile-industry-indifference/281294>)

On a related topic... I'm testing a web service I've been developing for PBS to help visualize their "datacast" feed of WEA alert traffic nationwide.  For now it's at <http://warn.botterell.net>.  Not 100% reliable yet, and some of the simplified state and county outlines need refinement... but those are only for messages that come in with just a FIPS code... explicit targeting polygons render quite precisely.  I built this mainly as a tool for our State Warning Center to be able to monitor WEA activity statewide... but it's interesting to look at it set for national coverage... the afternoon squall lines in the midwest show up vividly as a line of FFWs and TORs.  (There, see, even I sometimes use SAME codes as shorthand.)

Best regards,

Art