RE: (DHS) Coming Soon To Your Cell Phone: Text Emergency Alerts

And I suspect not a standard 
in use or in sight. Please correct me if I am 
wrong!

 

Carl

 

 

Coming Soon To Your Cell 
Phone: Text Emergency Alerts 

  
  

    By 
      Christopher Heun 
    InternetWeek 

Page 1 of 2

The Homeland Security Department has begun updating 
the Cold War-era Emergency Alert System following an executive order issued last 
month by the White House. One of the new 
requirements of the system is the capability to deliver messages based on an 
individual's geographic location. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency conducted a series of tests earlier 
this month with 24 public television stations across the country that showed how 
they could use digital television broadcasts to disseminate public alerts to 
traditional broadcast outlets as well as wireless devices, cable TV channels and 
satellite radio. 

In addition, a Federal Communications Commission meeting Aug. 3 is expected 
to address the role of the wireless industry in the new alert system. Depending 
on the final conclusions, cell phones and other wireless devices could become 
the newest way for the government to deliver critical information after a 
natural disaster, terrorist attack or even a serious traffic accident. 

One company hoping to cash in on the new requirements is Manassas, 
Virginia-based SquareLoop Inc., which has developed a location-based messaging 
system for wireless devices. 

In February and March, SquareLoop tested its system with the City of 
Manassas, delivering messages - including evacuation information, Amber alerts 
for missing children and traffic congestion updates to specific geographic 
locations within city limits - to 30 volunteer emergency responders on their 
Motorola and RIM Blackberry phones on the Sprint iDEN network. 

  
  

    

    
Click image to 
      enlarge.

Two things distinguish SquareLoop's technology, according to COO Joe Walsh. 
Messages are delivered based on geographic location without physical tracking, 
and they arrive with their own unique tone to differentiate them from other text 
messages. 

On top of that, SquareLoop can send messages in multiple languages and uses 
text to speech conversion software to deliver a message to a disabled person as 
an audio file - two requirements stated in last month's executive order by the 
White House. The company also scrapped the 140-character limit to include more 
information inside an alert. 

Walsh insists SquareLoop is mindful of personal privacy because the company 
doesn't track a person's location. Instead, it relies on an application 
downloaded on the phone and the phone's wireless receiver to filter messages, 
which contain a target location and time frame. The phone then determines if the 
message applies. 

"We don't need to know where someone is because we're pushing all that out to 
the edge of the network, really out to the cell phone," Walsh says. 

In response to a traffic accident or a biological agent release, SquareLoop 
can send messages only to those people in the vicinity of the affected area, 
even days afterward. Emergency response teams can designate, on mapping 
software, the area in which a given message applies. For those outside that 
location, the message is archived in case they enter it later. 

"All messages have a lifespan," CEO Tom Stroup says about the alerts, which 
can be sent via a Web-based interface or existing emergency management systems. 
"If there's a toxic spill it may be a dangerous area for two hours, not just 
affecting the people in the area at the time" of the spill.

SquareLoop got a boost in January when Morgan O'Brien, founder and former 
chairman of Nextel Communications, was named chairman of its advisory board. 

There are different kinds of location-based technologies, but what sets 
SquareLoop apart is that it doesn't require any action on the part of the cell 
phone user, says Matt Vartabedian, research manager at iGR, Inc. 

"If your geography changes, you would not receive alerts for the area you 
were not in," he says. In other words, people who live in Chicago wouldn't 
receive alerts about an evacuation of the Sears Tower, for example, if they were 
out of town for some reason. 

That's not the case with other providers. Roam Secure, Inc. of Arlington, 
Virginia, also sends text-based emergency alerts via text messages, but it does 
not target an individual's location. The company's citizen warnings system, in 
place in 18 jurisdictions in and around the District of Columbia as well as 
Jefferson Davis Parish outside of New Orleans and the City and County of San 
Francisco, sends out information based on the home address of a wireless device. 

Roam Secure, whose alerts cover traffic, weather and other emergencies, also 
operates systems specifically for first responder teams and for continuity of 
operations for government agencies and businesses. 

President Harry Truman established the first national alert system in 1951. 
Its original purpose was to give the president a means to address the country in 
case of a national emergency, but by 1963, the system also transmitted state and 
local emergency information. 

Since then, local emergency management personnel have used the EAS structure 
to relay local emergency messages via broadcast stations, cable, and wireless 
cable systems. 

Earlier this month, FEMA distributed test messages over the Public 
Broadcasting Service's satellite system to local public television stations 
using a technology called datacasting, a one-way broadcast service that, when 
combined with an existing high-speed network, can stream video or transmit large 
files to thousands of locations simultaneously. 

Public safety officials could use datacasting to pinpoint specific locations 
to receive messages and they could also use it to distribute information over a 
variety of media, such as cell phones, PDAs, pagers and computers. Datacasts are 
transmitted through a digital television signal and a receiver hooked up to a 
personal computer, laptop or computer network. The datacast receiver separates 
the data bits from the television programming stream, allowing this data to be 
manipulated and saved to any software program. 

Carl Reed, PhD
CTO and Executive Director Specification 
Program
OGC

 

The OGC: Helping the World to Communicate Geographically

 

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"The important thing is not to stop questioning." -- Albert Einstein 

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is 
either a daring adventure or nothing." -- Helen Keller