[EAS] Blue Alerts Are Back

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

Fair points, Dave.  Although I'm not persuaded that a well-designed input tool can't make the process easy without injecting the SAME codes into the WEA process.  Part of my concern is that the SAME event code list is, to put it bluntly, a hot mess.  

As I've mentioned enough times that I imagine folks must be getting tired of hearing it, the SAME event code list has accumulated, over the years, to represent a jumble of hazard types, protective action recommendations and source/administrative categories.  It's by no means a streamlined or easily comprehended tool... witness the debate over whether a Blue Alert needs a separate code or can be treated as a case of LEW.  Examples of that sort of ambiguity and overlap abound.

Let's not forget, meanwhile, that the optimal use-cases for WEA and EAS are somewhat different.  EAS provides wide area alerting about (presumably) wide-area events.  WEA (and "reverse 911") allows targeted alerting to much smaller areas.  (No, it didn't start out that way, but that's the definite trend now.)  WEA provides an alternative for officials who don't want to spin up a whole county (or in metro areas, multiple counties) over a hazard that may be affecting an area as small as a few city blocks.  An imperfect alternative, admittedly, but it's getting better rapidly.

In many ways, geotargeting specificity is the cure for "message flooding."  That's really only a problem when you have to interrupt programming to a large area every time a specific area needs alerting.  There are things that can be done with HD radio and ATSC digital TV to work around that, but since the Commission has yet to mandate them... and since we can expect howls of protest from broadcasters  and the consumer electronics industry if and when it does... those opportunities have almost entirely been left on the table.

OK, that's a bit of drift from the event code topic, so let me return.  The actual choice that WEA presents originators is massively simpler than that presented by the SAME event list.  The topical (CAE) and source-based (EAN) categories aren't available through WEA, which leaves only Test / Public Safety / Imminent Threat as the selection to be made.  (Admittedly the Public Safety / Imminent Threat distinction isn't exactly intuitive, but that's just one teaching point instead of dozens... and certainly simpler than needing to remember which codes will be delivered according to which rules.)  And, most fundamentally, using SAME codes in WEA obscures the real mechanics of WEA by erecting a facade that makes it look like EAS when in fact it isn't.

There's a fond tendency to imagine that SAME has been designed by higher authorities with a clearer understanding and thus should not be meddled with.  But the Blue Alert discussion reminds us that the SAME event-code list has developed incrementally through a series of initiatives by fallible individuals that often had more to do with political imaging than with actual operational needs.  There's really nothing particularly special about it, and certainly nothing that needs to be imposed on more modern systems.

Art

________________________________________
From: EAS <eas-bounces at radiolists.net> on behalf of Dave Turnmire <EASsbeList at cableone.net>

[snip...]
Just to point out one flip side of the argument... the alerting system
used in our state can and is used for issuing BOTH EAS and WEA alerts.
It is principally which box(s) you check.  It streamlines the process at
the very time the event has them busy. The use of previously created
templates further streamlines that process.  Indeed, if NOAA could get
their technology working, we could also check the "NWEM" box and have
the alerts go out directly through NOAA "All Hazards Radio" rather than
indirectly as at present.

In short, it seems to me that there remains some advantages to having
some correspondence between EAS event codes and WEA.  That isn't to say
you can't take advantage of the uniqueness of WEA to send out alerts
unique to WEA when warranted.  Just as we have a number of EAS event
types that can't be sent via WEA.  But for those types of public warning
events that warrant getting the message out to the public by the maximum
number of means possible in as short of time as possible... including
BOTH EAS and WEA... lets make it as easy as possible for the originators.

Dave