[EAS] The words we use

[Botterell, Arthur@CalOES]

No, Sean, it's not naive, it merely runs against conventional thought.  Neither do I pretend that political boundaries don't exist... bit of a straw man there, no?... I merely dispute whether they're a justification for delaying or denying needful warnings.  There's no legal restriction against warning across jurisdictional boundaries... it's more a case of a traditional professional courtesy among jurisdictions at the expense of the public in the "other" jurisdiction.  California's State Warning Plan is explicit that cross-border alerting is permissible, both within the state and with adjoining ones.  If other states want to go on record in favor of delaying warnings to their citizens, they're free to do so, but I don't expect that to happen.

I understand that contradicting such a traditional assumption may be shocking, especially to folks who've never actually had responsibility for issuing public warnings.  Nonetheless, I've been in the position of having a gasoline spill running down a creek into another county and having no way to warn folks until I could get the entire emergency management organization "next door" woken up and mobilized.  (Again, a case of where "emergency managers" and public safety responders are not necessarily the same people.)  For folks who've actually had warning responsibility, this is in no way an abstract consideration.

Also, I guess I'll need you to explain how NYC's statement of a two-block requirement was in any way political.

The rest of your note seems to be a recitation of the status quo as though it were holy writ.  That's exactly the sort of lazy, unimaginative thinking that's brought us to our current problems.  "We've always done it that way" is never a sufficient justification.

And the lack of precision of broadcasting is a problem for the usefulness of EAS, but it really isn't a justification for anything, is it?

Art
________________________________________
From: EAS <eas-bounces at radiolists.net> on behalf of Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com>

On Mon, 4 Sep 2017, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES wrote:
> Another semantic pitfall is framing the issue of warning in terms of
> political boundaries, like those on which FIPS codes are founded.

Pretending that political boundaries and jurisdictional authority don't
exist is also naive for civil alerting and warnings. I understand why new
york city civil authorities make the political argument for hyper-local
geo-targeting need to be less than 528 feet. I can put all sorts of
things on my wishlist, when I don't need to pay for them.

Civil warnings are issued by authorities with jurisdiction determined by
political boundaries.  The U.S. National Weather Service doesn't issue
weather alerts for Canada.  NOAA/NWS draws a polygon up to the US/Canada
border; and Environment Canada draws a polygon on its side of the
political border.  The weather doesn't stop at the US/Canada border, but
the jurisdiction does.  Even between different NOAA/NWS Weather Forecast
Offices, polygons almost never cross into the jurisdiction of a
different weather forecast office.

California civil authorities don't issue civil alerts for adjacent states,
even though some EAS local areas extend across the border between
California/Nevada and California/Oregon. Heck, the Texas Governor had to
walk back his statements about voluntary evacuation in Houston because he
didn't have the jurisdiction.

Most states issue AMBER alerts state-wide because the authority having
jurisdiction for AMBER alerts is a state-wide agency, not because its
likely the abductor left the immediate area. I expect the same
jurisdictional lines will be true for BLUE alerts.  A blue alert issued by
Maryland authorities won't be broadcast in New York City, until maybe
passing through multiple jurisdictional hurdles.

Likewise, Nielson Designated Market Areas (DMA) have more influence on EAS
cable system and broadcast propagation than FIPS codes or polygons in CAP
messages. Nielson also tends to follow political boundaries, with only a
rare split county. NYC OEM can draw 528 foot polygons or use FIPS codes,
but broadcasters will still interrupt programming in the entire
Nielson DMA.