Page 47 - Security Today, May/June 2019

used more than 40,000 times to warn the public about impending weather, missing children and other emergencies, all through cell phone alerts.
The WEA alerts are sent through FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) to participating wireless carriers, who then push the alerts to mobile devices in the affected areas. Federal, state and local authorities have the ability to leverage IPAWS alerts to send messages within their own jurisdictions as well. IPAWS was created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2006 to provide public safety officials with an effective way to alert and warn the public about serious emergencies and provide the pub- lic with life-saving information quickly. IPAWS is a modernization and integration of the nation’s alert and warning infrastructure.
For all of the benefits that IPAWS, WEA and public alerting sys- tems can deliver, usage rates at the county/local level remain low. There are roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S., yet for a variety of reasons less than 1,100 of them utilize IPAWS. Given that IPAWS can reach the mobile phone of every citizen (who owns one), increasing the number of counties using public alerting systems will go hand-in- hand with keeping more people safe.
Public alerting systems represent another tool in the toolkit that public safety officials should be using to protect citizens, alongside phone, text, social media, emergency sirens, etc. That said, the abil- ity of agencies to better leverage public alerting systems and drive broader citizen participation comes down to acknowledging current challenges and following a set of best practices.
Public Alerting System Best Practices
As noted, county-level participation in IPAWS, in particular, is a work in progress. Fear of the “oops” factor if an alert is distributed (or not distributed) in error, the need for self-administered classes and training and commonly-held misperceptions about public alerting systems, in general, have slowed county uptake.
Extending the availability of public alerting systems to more citi- zens and maximizing the benefits these systems can deliver can be aided by following several best practices.
Complete IPAWS Accreditation Process
Emergencies take their heaviest toll on property and life when there aren’t effective communications that reach all audiences. The fed- eral government released its strategic plan for IPAWS in 2010, and all government agencies can use the system for public messages in emergencies.
While qualified government entities can use IPAWS, they must first get accredited. To start, select an origination software provider that has an IPAWS Developer Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). Be sure your provider can launch alerts to employees and residents through voice, text, email, RSS feeds, website widgets, social media, and more, all from one interface.
Focus on growing citizen participation rate. IPAWS is a core but not the sole component of an effective emergency notification plan. The power and limitations of IPAWS demonstrate the need for a single initiation tool for all alert delivery channels as there will be cir- cumstances when not all residents receive an IPAWS alert messages and no one solution hits every recipient on every device, every time.
By running ongoing campaigns to get citizens and government
employees to sign up for alerts, you can increase the ability to reach more people during emergencies and severe weather. This is espe- cially important in areas that have seasonal populations and higher rates of extreme weather events.
While IPAWS and FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alerts are feder- ally managed national notification systems that local communities can use, many also choose their own notification systems or those offered by third parties.
Use FEMA Test Lab. FEMA has put forth tremendous effort to work with local jurisdictions and the emergency notification vendor community to grow enrollment. FEMA outreach and support ef- forts have contributed greatly to the success of IPAWS and growth in system use. Counties and other local jurisdictions should leverage FEMA’s enhanced test lab program, where they can log-in and send thousands of test messages to the lab to ensure the Emergency Mass Notification System they use works correctly. The test lab is essential because jurisdictions don’t want the first time they use IPAWS or a new feature to be during an actual emergency.
Ensure integration with vendor tools. Even as the use of public alerting systems is trending in the right direction, many public safety officials are still unclear about how effective IPAWS can be when used in combination with their existing mass notification systems. There is uncertainty about what constitutes an imminent threat for a WEA alert and several other questions about the way IPAWS works.
Public officials struggle in how to best manage multiple alerting systems and the various methods of disseminating alerts. By integrat- ing with the right EMNS vendor, localities can reduce the complex- ity with a single source tool that can provide for all five avenues of dissemination through IPAWS: the Emergency Alert System (EAS), Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), Non-Weather Emergency Mes- sages (NWEM), COG to COG, and public alert feeds.
We are also starting to see increased innovation to enhance sys- tem capabilities. First, by incorporating the IPAWS tool as an embed- ded workflow in an existing mass notification system build, IPAWS becomes a delivery endpoint rather than a standalone notification - which means that IPAWS users could simultaneously launch single emergency messages without having to duplicate the process for both IPAWS and the vendor notifications. Vendors are also adding new mapping features that can show users anywhere in the country an active IPAWS alert has been issued and where it was. By doing so, counties and other localities can see how peers are using the system and become more educated on best practices.
Make sure vendor meets updated FCC guidance. In May of 2019, FEMA - IPAWS in collaboration with the FCC and broadcast/ cellular providers will be incorporating several new enhancements to the current IPAWS system. These new broader capabilities will allow public safety officials to reach more citizens with longer messages and in multiple languages. Several new event codes and new alert types for Blue Alert and Live WEA Testing will be added as well.
With all of these new enhancements coming to IPAWS, it is im- perative to make sure that your IPAWS provider is one that will be incorporating all of these new capabilities into their IPAWS Alert Origination tool for your expanded use. Many of the IPAWS tools currently available to public safety officials across the nation are not in compliance with the IPAWS functionality requirements that are in place today. Whether or not they will become compliant with the
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