Posted by Edward Czarnecki
Vice President, SpectraRep

The Federal Communications Commission recently held an Emergency Alert System Summit, ostensibly to foster dialogue between the private sector and the government players and to assess the current state of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and its future.

EAS was put into place in 1994, replacing the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS). Today, EAS is jointly coordinated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Emergency Managemant Agency (FEMA), and the National Weather Service (NWS). The national EAS is designed to enable the President of the United States to speak to the United States in the event of a national emergency.

As leveraged by state and local authorities, EAS is used for the issuance of civil and AMBER (missing child) alerts, as well as the relay of weather alerts over broadcast radio and television, and cable systems. The vast majority of alerts issued over EAS are weather related, followed by AMBER alerts.

Despite its successful use at the state level, EAS has its challenges. Under existing rules, for example, participation of broadcasters in state and local alerts is voluntary and the system’s technology is outdated. The audio (voice) alert message may not (and often do not) match the text crawl appearing on television screens. EAS does not readily interoperate with other outbound warning channels, such as test messaging, e-mail, etc. What’s more, the current EAS has limitations interfacing with newer communications technologies and issuing alerts in multiple languages.

As bad as that sounds in itself, other fundamental problems plague the system. One EAS consultant at the FCC summit noted that 63% of the 78 broadcast stations recently inspected had malfunctioning EAS decoders.

In its July 12, 2007, “Second Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” issued in EB Docket 04-296, the FCC has begun to explore steps towards a “Next Generation EAS“, to help solve some of these challenges. Among actions taken by the Second Report and Order, the Commission ordered that all EAS Participants must be able to receive messages formatted pursuant to the Common Alert Protocol (CAP) within 180 days of the adoption of said protocol by FEMA.

CAP – an XML data format – will be a major step way towards making EAS more useful and powerful. It will hopefully foster greater interoperability between EAS and other warning technologies, and provide greater information and targeting of alerts. It will also pose challenges, as CAP will require the deployment of IP-based systems, in tandem with the current tone/voice based system.

This change to CAP will represent a fundamental shift in how EAS works – from the current decentralized, device-centric, tonal-based system – towards a centralized, network centric, IP-based system. However, such a change will require new network design and configuration, as well as additional deployment, monitoring and maintenance.

In short, the next-generation EAS may resolve many issues in the current Emergency Alert System, but it will also pose other significant issues in terms of funding, management, new vendor choices, and forming a more comprehensive public alert and warning strategy.

Tags: CAP, Common Alerting Protocol, EAS, EBS, Edward Czarnecki, Emergency Alert System, Emergency Broadcast System, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Emergency Managemant Agency, FEMA, National Weather Service, NWS