The choice of Fugate may have some interesting implications for public alert and warning at a national level. He’s been intimately involved in the deployment of multiple public warning capabilities, knows EAS and appreciates the critical role of broadcasters. He was the chairman of the Partnership for Public Warning beginning in May 2002, and we had the opportunity to watch Craig in action as members of PPW.

He may be able to offer input to the Federal discussion about public warning – and EAS specifically – unlike any other past FEMA director.

Indeed, Craig Fugate is widely considered to be among the best emergency managers in the country, and Florida is looked upon as one of the best prepared states. The nomination of Fugate may be a very good thing for the national alert and warning dialogue, as for FEMA in general.

In talking with many state EAS Chairs and Broadcasters, it seems that just about all are familiar with the FCC’s 2nd report and order mandating that EAS participants must have the ability to accept a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message within 180 days from the date that FEMA announces a systems standard.

With FEMA publicizing their intention to release a standards announcement in the first quarter of 2009, many broadcasters are concerned that this compliance train is quickly barreling down the tracks towards them.

The FCC 2nd Report and Order implies that in order for the state broadcasters to receive a CAP message; the state (and even counties and municipalities) need to have systems capable of sending and distributing CAP messages. This is where things get a little tricky. Broadcasters realize that they need to act, but need to do so with the involvement and support of the state government to adopt a system that offers the ability to both send and receive a CAP based message.

As with broadcasters, a major challenge for many emergency managers is locating funding for these new initiatives.

With the recent release of the Homeland Security Grant Program overview for Fiscal Year 2009, it appears that the Federal government is aware of the funding dilemma that states are facing in order to implement state wide system upgrades to EAS, and are opening existing grant programs to help fulfill requests.

For example, the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) and Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) program are making available $861.3 million and $798.6 million, respectively.

The Emergency Management Performance Grants (EMPG) make over 306 million dollars available for the purpose of “assisting state and local governments in enhancing and sustaining all-hazards emergency management capabilities.”

Hopefully this grant program will help to alleviate some of the funding issues that have kept states and broadcasters from moving forward from a funding standpoint. However the deadlines will require fast planning to make requests for funding for all-hazards alerting programs.

As a courtesy to our colleagues in the emergency management and broadcast industry, we’ll be providing occasional updates as to key developments in the countdown towards the migration of broadcast EAS to an Advanced CAP-based EAS.

As you recall, the FCC set the ball in motion when it decided in its Second Report and Order (2007) that all EAS participants (broadcasters and others) must have an ability to “accept” a CAP message within 180 days after FEMA issues its decision to accept CAP as the messaging standard for advanced EAS.

The pace of events has accelerated dramatically over the past few months, and below are a few events and milestones that we thought you should be aware of.

In July 2008, FEMA announced its intention to issue that decision in the 1st Quarter of 2009, by providing its CAP profile for IPAWS.

In May 2008, leading EAS manufacturers and advanced systems providers gathered together to create the EAS-CAP Industry Group (www.eas-cap.org) and issued its draft EAS-CAP profile on October 7th. This profile is intended to be a first step towards CAP data interoperability among advanced EAS equipment and system providers. SpectraRep was a leading participant in this Industry Group. The Group will be meeting with Federal agencies in the near future to hopefully coordinate speedy adoption of a final EAS-CAP profile.

At the same time, national level industry associations in the broadcast and emergency management field have begun working together to develop a comprehensive roadmap towards CAP implementation. SpectraRep was also asked to participate in these national level coordination efforts.

In sum, the transition towards next-generation CAP-based EAS is taking on speed. State broadcast associations, State Emergency Communications Committees and emergency managers should be monitoring this closely, as relatively near-term changes will likely be needed for EAS plans, as well as technologies being put into place.

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.

The continuing backdrop of homeland security threats – crossing a broad spectrum of contingencies from acts of terrorism to natural disasters to other human-made hazards (accidental or intentional) – highlight the importance of timely and effective warnings at the national, state and local levels. The ultimate goal is to develop an all-hazards warning capability, encompassing weather warnings, AMBER Alerts, and any number of local and regional emergencies.

Technological advances in communications media – broadcast and telecommunications – have provided opportunities for truly enhanced, integrated public alert and warning capabilities. The range of private sector systems and networks that can potentially participate in the public warning mission is dramatically expanding, with interoperability increasingly being driven by and acceptance of standards-based approaches.

New Public Warning Players

In the area of public alert and warning, the interoperability challenge is being tackled at a diverse level. At the Federal level, the standards challenge involves an array of players, including FEMA (which has principle authority over the national level Emergency Alert System, or EAS), the National Weather Service, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In addition, the search for a truly integrated public alert and warning system has involved a much broader array of private sector actors than ever before. While traditional broadcast EAS players retain their invaluable role at the center of the system, the playing field has been expanded to include mobile phones, text messaging devices, computers, digital signage/ electronic billboards, and much more.

These “new” public warning players have become deeply involved in the process of developing a next-generation EAS though a number of venues. One such forum is the FCC’s Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee (CMSAAC)1. The CMSAAC mission is to develop recommendations on technical standards and protocols to facilitate the ability of Commercial Mobile Service (CMS) providers to voluntarily transmit emergency alerts to their subscribers. The Committee consists of 40 representatives of state and local governments; communications service providers; vendors; commercial and noncommercial broadcasters; individuals with special needs; and other technical representatives.

Open Standards, Open Architectures

A key area of discussion between the private sector and government is the question of open standards and open architectures. The use of open standards and open architectures represent major new directions in the evolution of the EAS, and the next generation of emergency notification technologies currently being deployed are based on key open standards such as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). CAP and EDXL emerged as a result of coordination between industry and government to formulate an open, non-proprietary digital message format for all types of alerts and notifications.

Public Broadcast Community

Another shift in private sector participation in EAS can be seen in the growing role of the public broadcast community. Perhaps the highest profile example of this new paradigm can be seen in efforts to upgrade the national-level EAS. FEMA and the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) have been working with SpectraRep, PBS and local public broadcasters to develop an enhanced national-level EAS capability, using local public television digital infrastructure and the PBS satellite interconnection system. This FEMA system – called “DEAS” or “Digital Emergency Alert System” – leverages interoperable technologies and is being designed and deployed with an eye towards open standards, such as use of the Common Alerting Protocol. DEAS is part of a broader FEMA system called IPAWS – the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.

Alerting at the State and Local Levels

At the state and local level, there are a range of efforts to bring CAP-based all-hazards warning technologies into the public alerting arena. FEMA is working to provide a pilot of local alert origination capabilities in nine states, using tools like SpectraRep’s AlertManager™ and ActiveAccess™. AlertManager is an end-to-end system for the origination and dissemination of EAS messaging, transported via satellite and DTV multicast data transport, as well as via the Internet. AlertManager enables public alert and warning information to be sent to the public via broadcast radio and television, cable, satellite radio, cell phones, pagers, computer desktops, and electronic signage. The system is designed to be interoperable with other emerging CAPb-based systems, like DEAS and NOAA’s Hazcollect. ActiveAccess is a powerful desktop application that delivers EAS, Weather Service weather alerts and bulletins, news crawls, weather radar information, and preparedness information to the general public, government agencies, critical infrastructure and businesses.

Next Generation EAS

Systems like DEAS and AlertManager give the “new EAS” the ability to provide much more than a brief audio message and a modest onscreen crawl. The capabilities are now available for dissemination of live or recorded video, multiple simultaneous languages, maps, graphics, resources for the hearing-impaired, and more. And since these systems are based on the open Common Alerting Protocol, the same message that triggers multimedia over broadcast television and radio can also activate a broad array of geographically targeted warning systems. Use of open standards will expand the array of private sector participants in the public warning mission, extending the public warning ecosystem to include radio and television broadcaster, cable, telecommunications companies, media outlets, software providers, device manufacturers, and any other number of IP-based systems.

1 The Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee (CMSAAC) was established pursuant to Section 603 of the Warning, Alert and Response Network Act enacted on October 13, 2006. SpectraRep was appointed to this committee by the FCC Commissioner.

** This article originally appeared in a recent edition of “The Insider,” a Publication by COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance