Some nice dialogue on the LinkedIn Public Warning and Mass Notification System (MNS) group about lessons about alerting from Sandy. Todd Piett of Rave Mobile Safety said as they provided support to their customers in the northeast, these best practices were most obvious:
- Multi-model communications is key.
- Have back up plans (and back ups to back ups)
- Aim twice and pull the trigger once; training is the key.
- Reassess and begin preparing again.
Lessons you've heard before, but it's always good to take another look after a major event to see which lessons stand out. The site's moderator David Burns echoed Todd's multi-model comments pointing out that, during an event such as this, cell service may actually diminish as power generators run out of fuel. He also reminder the group that we're only now experiencing failures; they will occur for weeks and months.
Ed Czarnecki of Monroe Electronics said Sandy "also demonstrated the continuing value of legacy warning systems, like broadcast EAS". He said, "Next-gen delivery methods for CAP were disrupted for EAS Participants (TV, radio, cable, IPTV) to varying extents". He'd like to see the FCC keep the legacy methods for deploying EAS in parallel with new methods.
You can follow the LinkedIn group here, or feel free to comment below.
All the best,
Rick
