[EAS] Nebraska Endangered Missing Alert

[Rod Zeigler]

Since this topic is not related to the previous thread I changed the 
subject line.

The Endangered Missing Alert that Nebraska just introduced was created 
to address a number of issues that have come up in the state over the 
last year.
A state senator was attempting to create Silver Alerts, and the 
attendant bureaucracy, a la AMBER alerts.
There were other "Color" alerts being proposed and a plethora of these 
was something that the alerting agencies wanted to avoid as much as 
possible.
The criteria for AMBER alerts was being questioned by various law 
enforcement agencies and the media, even though those criteria are set 
by NCMEC and states agree to them when they join AMBER.

There is just cause for issuing alerts in certain situations that did 
not involve minors or meet AMBER criteria, however no framework existed 
to do this.
The use of EAS for the above was discouraged by many, including the 
Nebraska SECC because of the changing landscape of alerting.
AMBER alerts in Nebraska have been, and are, transmitted statewide 
because that was also the only way to distribute those alerts when AMBER 
was initiated.
Transmitting statewide alerts via EAS for all of the incidents expected 
to be covered by the EMA was a non-starter for all involved.
At some point in the future I expect to see AMBER revisited and 
statewide dissemination changed, but there had to be a proven technique 
to replace it. New CAP technology opened the door to this. The state 
then had to get the groundwork done for this technology to be used by 
those agencies involved in alerting. This was finally accomplished in Q4 
of 2017.

As we have seen with the Hawaii Missile Incident the landscape of 
alerting is changing rapidly and legacy EAS is now just one tool in a 
box that is getting new tools all the time.
Teaching the craftsman to use the correct tool, on the correct 
situation, at the correct time seems to be what all alerting 
stakeholders need to focus on now.

Rod

-- 
R. V. Zeigler, Dir. of Eng.
Nebraska Rural Radio Assn.
Chairman, Ne. SECC
Exec. Dir. NEBA