[EAS] [BWWG] Can this be true?

[Richard Rudman]

We should have no problem with using social media for public alerting as long as the EM community does not lose the core concepts in the PPW reports based on years of solid warning research. We did not know about Twitter when we wrote the reports, but we all suspected new ways to reach the public would be devised once we had an international standard non-proprietary open source thing called the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).

Each public warning method has its own strengths and weaknesses, even sirens.

* Using all available public alerting systems including social media capitalizes on the strengths of each to reach a portion of a group of people at risk.

* Using all available public alerting systems including social media reinforces the protective actions that people at risk should take to protect their lives and property.

* Using all available public alerting systems including social media helps insure that the alerting message will be conveyed when we know not all systems may not survive the emergency conditions that they are alerting for.

Richard Rudman

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 3:12 PM, Botterell, Arthur at CalOES <Arthur.Botterell at CalOES.ca.gov> wrote:
> 
> I read the abstract of an academic paper this week that opened with the claim that, "Social media have become the tool of choice for public alerting."