Enhanced Alerting on the Way

Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) is a new public safety system, announced May 10th, to send free text alerts to cell phones. Geographically-targeted Presidential, emergency and AMBER alerts will use unique vibrations and tones to send alerts of imminent threats to safety. PLAN complements the existing Emergency Alert System (prior to 1998 known as the Emergency Broadcast System) and will be implemented by the FCC and FEMA. While the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) Is apparently voluntary, the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act requires those wireless carriers to activate PLAN technology by April 2012.  AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon have pledged earlier support.

The infrastructure behind this is the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System – Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN) which uses a common, proven “Message Broker” pattern to deliver Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messages through a diverse infrastructure as shown in the architecture diagram on the right. (Click it for a larger version.)

Obviously CMAS is just a small part of the overall system.

IPAWS-OPEN 2.0 is in limited operation and IPAWS-OPEN 3.0 is in development with the detailed CAP 1.2 message structure being worked on. IPAWS-OPEN is not just for alerting, but also “situation reports, common operational picture snapshots, and other emergency related information”, so can be used to send private messages as well as public alerts.

Per system architect Gary Ham’s unofficial estimates on May 18th, external testing in July/August are expected to lead to the first operational CMAS demos in NYC in September, with full operation in December.

Due to authorization issues, I suspect any alerts to Vashon residents would have to (appropriately) originate at the WA State Military Department or King County level. Policies for management of the actual system are largely still to be determined.

However, locally on Vashon, we are getting set up this summer with the state and county funded MyStateUSA.com’s alerting system, which is already CAP 1.1 compliant, so likely will quickly be upgraded to take advantage of this new source of messages - and maintain it’s multi-headed ability to send out alerts via email, text, fax, phone - and probably semaphore.

A future blog is planned, to provide more details about the cutting edge WA State alerting infrastructure run by Don Miller, KE7UUK, Director of Communications, Washington Department of Emergency Services - and how King County and Vashon fit into that.

MyStateUSA should allow us to send alerts to our volunteers and perhaps even to the general public on Vashon (those who had opted-in) when appropriate, e.g., to report in to the EOC if it were activated. The estimated 10¢ per activation call sort of limits the frequency that we’d use this of course!

VashonBePrepared already has the ability to alert the public via Voice of Vashon Standing By (1650 AM), our Constant Contact email lists (please subscribe), and the Regional Public Information Network (RPIN) – for which we urge all Vashonites to subscribe to!