Alerting Solutions, Inc. developed a Common Alerting Protocol based warning system for states, counties and cities. Examples for a state installation are the Emergency Digital Information Service for the State of California and the State of Hawaii Warning System, and examples for county installation - Contra Costa Country and San Mateo County warning systems.
State System - California
Operated by the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, the Emergency Digital Information Service (EDIS) is the nation's first statewide warning system to use the Common Alerting Protocol. Through EDIS, California state, federal, and local agencies can post messages that are broadcast over the Emergency Alert System and delivered to subscribers over email, pagers, SMS, desktop pop-ups, and other means. The State's Emergency Alert System of broadcasters and cable systems can be activated using EDIS, which can provide both recorded and text-to-speech content for broadcast. EDIS also has a two-way link to the National Weather Service and NOAA Weather Radio. Public subscription to EDIS is available free at edis-by-email.net. (You can see a scrolling RSS EDIS feed on our home page).
County System - Contra Costa County
View youtube presentation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esF3ynqUI_c
This award-winning system was created to provide warnings to residents living near oil refineries along San Francisco Bay in Contra Costa County. While that is still its primary purpose, the system has been expanded to provide all-hazards warning. Operated by the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office, the system includes more than 40 outdoor warning sirens and can send warnings via email, pager, SMS, "reverse 911" telephone notification, the Emergency Alert System, and other means. A map-based interface allows precise warnings of affected areas.
The Contra Costa Community Warning System (CWS) is an emergency warning system that consists of alert, notification and education functions. The alert and notification features are linked by a radio frequency network, and are designed to function when telephone systems fail. Signals carried by radio frequency can activate every part of the emergency system.
CWS is used to alert the community and emergency responders when there are hazardous materials incidents in any the multiple refineries and chemical plants in the county. It includes a system of more than 40 outdoor sirens that can be quickly sounded in the event of a chemical release that could affect the public. Emergency response agencies can also activate the warning system for transportation and other types of incidents.
The system's design features multiple safeguards-such as back-up power at each broadcast point, operation on multiple radio frequencies, and four broadcast towers within the county to receive and broadcast signals, giving the system an excellent chance of surviving a major earthquake.
Emergency Alert Receivers (EARs) are being placed in all schools (public and private), hospitals, daycare centers, convalescent hospitals and other critical locations in the county’s industrial corridor. The EARs can be used for any type of emergency.
Anguilla National Warning System
The island nation of Anguilla, in the Eastern Caribbean, selected Hormann America to design, develop software for, and supervise installation of a new warning system that makes use of broadcast radio, data-over-radio, and desktop pop-ups. The system, used for internal, interest group (tourism, etc.), and public notification, uses a single message created using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) technology to drive all these warning devices.
San Mateo County
Alerting Solutions, Inc. provides several warning tools, including a new tsunami warning system, to this California County. Tsunami warnings are sounded by a system of nine warning sirens, telephone, radio, emails, SMS etc.
Mexico City, Mexico
Earthquqke is a frightful word here. The city is built in an ""earthquake amplifier" location and fortunately can detect arrival of an earthquake wave and selected Alerting Solutions, Inc. to provide a sophisticated, yet low cost, public warning. Read the paper on the left for more information.
Mexico Earthquake Warning System
ASI reviewed and advised Mexico City in the ways to improve their Earthquake Warning System. The advance notice of 58 seconds allows the residents to take preventive actions prior to the arrival of the earthquake wave. However, the warning system was deficient as in the following paragraph taken from an article written by Dr. Espinosa. Dr. Espinosa is from the Centro de Instrumentacion Registro Sismico in Mexico City and in his article that was published in the Seismology Research Letters September/October 2009 he wrote:
“The most notorious deficiency of the SAS is not in its technical operation and performance. The most evident and important shortfall is the very limited number of registered users and the lack of a public safety program that promotes the distribution and responsible use of the seismic alert system for civil protection purposes. After almost 18 years of operation, the SAS has only 230 registered users; 25 are radio and television broadcasting stations, 76 are schools of all levels, 12 are emergency and civil protection agencies, four are offices of the subway system, 79 are government offices, 33 are private institutions, and only one is a residential building. Considering the size of Mexico City these figures are disappointingly low."
After reviewing the system by ASI, minor technical changes allowed the introduction of new devices as in the following paragraph of the same article:
“Recently, the SAS has proposed the use of low cost radios similar to those used to receive weather information and warnings, which represent a low initial investment, are easy to install,
and require essentially no maintenance.”
The system with the new radios has already proved its efficiency in an earthquake of 5.3 that occurred on March 27, 2009:
“a digital code relay system such as that used by NOAA was installed in Mexico City. On 27 March 2009 at 02:48:32 (local time),when the SAS emitted a signal of preventive alert to warn of the risk of an M 5.3 earthquake occurring at the coast of Guerrero (Figure 5), the SAS took advantage for the first time of the technology derived from NOAA/SAME receivers. That event validated the effective function of this advanced resource, which, with a minor technical adjustment, has been proposed as a means of more efficiently mitigating seismic vulnerability in Mexico.”
2009/10/02 16:11
