Our Galain colleague Maria Greene, who specializes in older adults, people with disabilities, and those with limited English proficiency, brought an interesting grant program to our attention. FEMA and the Rockefeller Foundation got together and created the "2012 Community Resilience Innovation Challenge". They're looking for communities that are creative in building local resilience through a Whole Community approach.
While the grant program is not specifically targeted at alert and warning initiatives, we are wondering if creative alerting approaches involving the Whole Community might be well-received by the grant committee. After all, Maria says nearly 25% of the U.S. population may need some form of assistance or accommodation to receive emergency alerts.
- Approximately 40.5-million Americans are over the age of 65
- Approximately 54-million Americans have disabilities
- Approximately 25.2 million of the U.S. population have limited English proficiency
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As public safety officials struggle to find ways to alert their full citizenry, there’s an interesting conflict at play when using telephone alerting systems. On one hand, there’s a constant battle to collect telephone numbers. The more numbers, the better. Right? On the other hand, when large volumes of calls are placed at once into a tight geographic area, the phone infrastructure can fail.
The phone number collection battle stems from the fact that so many people now use their cell phones as their home phone, and those cell numbers are not available to public safety officials for call-outs…unless citizens provide them and often they don’t.
In a recent cover story for Emergency Management magazine, we highlighted numbers from the Federal Communications Commission that showed the number of phone lines in the U.S. – both switched access (commonly called “land lines”) and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) dropped from 162.7-million in 2008 to 145.8-million in 2011. At the same time, mobile telephone subscribers increased by more than five-million.
There are good databases of “land line” phone numbers for public safety officials to use for alerting, but no good database of mobile phone numbers. Despite strong efforts to get people to provide their cell phone numbers for alerts, sign-up rates are low, although short bursts of sign-ups are often reported AFTER an emergency. The struggle continues.
Meantime, when large quantities of calls are placed into a specific geographic area, there’s a threat that the local telephone infrastructure can be overwhelmed – causing calls to be blocked. The real problem is the last mile, says Derrick Mar, a former chief technology officer for a company that operates large telephone call-out operations. He says carriers can re-route calls throughout a nationwide maze to avoid clogging, but when the calls reach the final switch connected to homes, they often hit analog or copper circuits that simply aren’t equipped to handle a large volume of calls.
Now, don’t get us wrong. We are not anti-telephone alerting systems. In fact, we think they can be a great warning tool – one of the best available. But, you have to be realistic about what they can and cannot do, and work to mitigate the challenges by using a full arsenal of alerting tools for critical events. Meantime, establish relationships with the local telephone company people so that, when you plan to send tons of calls into an area, perhaps they can take steps to help the calls get through. And, continue to try to get the public to provide their cell numbers. Offer pizza, if you have to. We’ve seen it done. And, let us know if we can help.
All the best,
Rick
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When wildfires struck Colorado earlier this year, the most destructive wildfires in state history, 29 square miles around Colorado Springs burned. Two died. More than 340 homes were destroyed.
There’s been a good bit of news media coverage since the fires about use of telephone alerting systems. In some cases, alerting systems failed – perhaps the result of overloaded local phone systems, perhaps vendor issues, perhaps operational problems. But, one of the biggest challenges of the Colorado fire call-outs related to the fact that public safety officials simply didn’t have enough phone numbers to call. The problem, not a new one and one dispatchers face every hour of every day, is the fact that so many people have dropped their “land-lines” and now use only mobile phones. And, there’s no database available of cell phone numbers, unlike for land-line numbers.
After the wildfires, the Denver Post did some checking. They found a huge gap between the number of adults in the area and the number of cell phones registered to receive alerts. Percentages ranged from .6% to 5.7%.
|
|
Adult Population |
Cell phones registered |
Percentage |
|
El Paso/Teller Counties |
525,000 |
13,000 |
2.5% |
|
Boulder County |
225,000 |
12,925 |
5.7% |
|
Pueblo County |
119,000 |
717 |
0.6% |
|
Total |
869,000 |
26,642 |
3.0% |
We suspect the same low numbers would be found throughout the country. (Someone should finance a national study; we’d be glad to do it.)
The good news is that the new federal alerting initiative, FEMA’s Integrated Public Alerting and Warning System (IPAWS), allows local officials to send alerts to cell phones without requiring the public to sign up. While there are limits on IPAWS, we’re confident fire evacuations would qualify for IPAWS use.
The bad news is that few local authorities have signed up to take part in IPAWS. Here’s a list from FEMA’s web site. The IPAWS initiative is virtually free for local authorities, and easy. They should be rushing the gates to take part.
All the best,
Rick
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A guidebook entitled, "Identifying Vulnerable Older Adults and Legal Options for Increasing Their Protection During All-Hazards Emergencies: A Cross-Sector Guide for States and Communities" has been published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). (Report can be viewed here.) The report, with its whopping mouthful of a title, provides good info for assisting and engaging older adults, caregivers, and communities for emergency planning.
We would have liked to have seen the report address alerting and warnings for older adults. Figuring out best practices for making sure older adults are well informed in an emergency is something we hear emergency managers talk about often. There are creative approaches being used, some of the most successful center around the concept that caregivers of older adults (family members, professionals) need to be a part of the process.
In a paper we drafted called, "Alerting the Whole Community: Removing Barriers to Alerting Accessibility", we pointed out that mobile technology approaches should not be ruled out as a way to help reach older adults. First, people over age of 65 should not be automatically lumped into a technophobe category. In a 2010 survey of Americans, Pew Research Center found that 68% of adults between the ages of 66-74 owned a cell phone, and 48% of adults over the age of 75 owned a cell phone. A variety of alert and warning approaches uses cell phones, including the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) initiative deployed around the nation that broadcasts text-like alerts to cell phones in an area for imminent threats, AMBER Alerts, and Presidential emergency messages.
Certainly, use of mobile devices is not the complete answer for making sure older adults are effectively alerted, but using them will help. We're interested in hearing some of the approaches you've used. We'll share them in a future post. You can either comment on-line here, or send an email to maria.greene@galainsolutions.com. (She's our expert on older adults.)
Meantime, read the CDC report, and let me know at rick.wimberly@galainsolutions.com if you're interested in a draft of the white paper on alerting the whole community.
All the best,
Rick
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With major storms imminent, this is a good time to encourage the public to register for local alerting solutions. Even if your area is not threatened by what could be the biggest storm of the century, use your communications channels (local media, etc) to urge people to sign up.
Sign up rates for alerting systems where the public must register are never high, but it seems like sign ups spike when there's a significant event (often after the event).
All the best,
Rick
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In response to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, Google launched it’s new Public Alerts service ahead of schedule. On Monday evening, the company announced its new emergency alerting service designed to highlight natural disaster and emergency warnings in conjunction with related searches on Google and Google Maps.
Google describes its service as “a new platform for disseminating emergency messages such as evacuation notices for hurricanes, and everyday alerts such as storm warnings.” Alert details will initially come from the US National Weather Service and the US Geological Survey covering weather, public safety, and earthquake events.
Google says its current list of alerting partners is small. However, it indicates future localized alerts may become available with the cooperation of local public safety agencies across the nation. Google is encouraging citizens to contact their local emergency management agency and ask them to share alert information in a “web-friendly” format (i.e. the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)).
Local agencies can pursue having their alerts issued through Google by taking the following steps:
- Ensure agency alerts can be translated into the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP 1.2) standard (typically through a commercial public alerting tool)
- Validate feed and CAP protocols using Google’s validation tool
- Complete this form initiating a Google review of the agency’s request
We applaud Google’s efforts here and suspect this will grow into another important channel for alerting the public. What do you think? We’d love to hear your opinion.
Best regards,
Lorin
More information on Google Public Alerts can be found here.
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My New York-based son says his buddies were saying a few days ago, "This storm must be real, my phone is doing weird things". They were referring to storm alerts their mobile devices were mysteriously receiving. When my son asked, "Is that an app, or how did you sign up?", his buddies told him that they had no idea why they were getting the alerts, but were glad they were.
Of course, we know (at least I hope all readers know by now) the alerts were coming from FEMA's Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) also known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) by the carriers, and Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) by the City of New York. With CMAS/WEA/PLAN, there's no need for the public to sign-up. The public automatically gets alerts if they have a wireless device that has been set up to receive the alerts (growing numbers are), if their carrier is participating (most are), and if they're within the affected area.
Well, CMAS/WEA/PLAN certainly got the attention of my son and his buddies and, yes, Patrick, this storm was for real.
All the best,
Rick
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It appears as if CMAS/WEA alerts were widely and successfully used throughout Hurricane Sandy’s assault on the northeast. Our sources at FEMA IPAWS and the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed alerts were issued all along the eastern seaboard in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.
The alerts included blizzard warnings, flash flood warnings, mandatory evacuations, and shelter-in-place messages depending on the location.
It’s interesting to see how agencies dealt with the 90-character message limitation. Here are a few examples:
- "Blizzard Warning this area til 6:00 PM EDT Tue. Prepare. Avoid Travel. Check media. –NWS"
- "Go indoors immediately and remain inside. DO NOT DRIVE. Call 9-1-1 for emergencies only."
- "Flash Flood Warning this area til 3:45 PM EDT. Avoid flood areas. Check local media. –NWS"
From comments on Twitter and other public sites, it seems the emergency messages were generally welcomed by citizens, even if some uncertainty existed as to how these were delivered. It’s exciting to see this technology being used in practical ways despite the tragic circumstances.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the emergency managers, first responders, healthcare providers, and citizens during this extremely difficult time.
Lorin
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