EU-Alert

EU-Alert/NL-Alert Cell Broadcast message in the area of Venlo, The Netherlands on 7 August 2018 as a result of a large toxic fire [1]

EU-Alert is the generic term for the European Public Warning Service. EU-Alert is compatible with Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) formerly known as the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) standard as used in the United States. All mobile phones OS (Android, IOS and Windows) since 2012 by default support EU-Alert/WEA/CMAS via Cell Broadcast for public warning messages.

The EU-Alert standard (TS 102 900 V1.2.1)[2] as defined by ETSI is the European Public Warning Service using the Cell Broadcast Service as a means of delivering public warning messages to the general public.

Specific countries using the EU-Alert service are identified by replacing the letters EU with the Country Identification letters in ISO 3166-1 :

  • NL-Alert: The national variant of EU-Alert for the Netherlands.
  • LT-Alert: The national variant of EU-Alert for Lithuania.
  • RO-Alert: The national variant of EU-Alert for Romania.

Dependent on the country legislation there are 5 types of Public Warning Service (PWS) messages one can receive on the mobile device. They're grouped into Cell Broadcast headings and channels, and include:

  • Extreme threats: Classified as threats to your life and property, like an impending catastrophic weather event like a hurricane or a terrorist attack.[3]
  • Severe threats: Less serious than the extreme threats, these could be the same types of situations, but on a smaller scale — stay safe, but no need to pack up the car and head for the hills.
  • EU-Amber, AMBER alerts: These are specific alerts aimed at locating a missing child.
  • EU-Info, Public Safety Messages to convey essential, recommended actions that can save lives or property (e.g. emergency shelter locations or a boil water order).
  • EU-Exercise, Test messages for national/regional/local purposes.

In countries that have selected Cell Broadcast as the technology to submit public warning messages up to 70%- 80% of the population older than 12 year receive the public warning verification message within seconds after the government authorities have submitted the message see as an example NL-Alert. Cell Broadcast is since 2012 supported by the default messaging app in Android, IOS and Windows 10.


Alternative solutions

Downloadable Mobile Applications

There are several downloadable mobile applications on the market that often warn on natural catastrophes; however, these are often not of official, but part of private initiatives that replicate information from state agencies [4].

All Downloadable Mobile applications have the issue that they are highly affected by traffic load as they required mobile data usage; therefore, especially in case of a disaster when load spikes of Data (Social media, Voice and Mobile app), tend to significantly slowdown mobile networks, as multiple events showed e.g. 2016 Brussels bombings, Paris attacks, 2017 London attacks, Manchester Arena bombing and 2016 Munich shooting.

Moreover downloadable Mobile Apps needs to be downloaded by subscribers and the experience over the years in many countries is that only a fraction of the population will take the effort to download and use an Emergency Mobile app that is only activated a few times in a year. Examples are in Germany with 1.500.000 downloads of the Katwarn and NINA mobile application [5] reaching a maximum of 2.5M people in Germany (<3% of the German population) and France only 500.000 downloads of the SAIP mobile application (<1% of the French population) despite large investments in application development and marketing. In France because of the limited success of the downloadable Mobile App SAIP (Système d’Alerte et d’Information des Populations) the service has been stopped as of June 2018 [6] [7].

Location based SMS

The use of Location Based SMS as an emergency notification service instead of Cell Broadcast is not advised[8] by industry experts. Location based SMS message delivery is not guaranteed, and the implementations provide no mechanism through which a sender can determine whether an SMS message has been delivered in a timely manner especially when network congestion occurs at the time of an emergency [9].

Additional disadvantages to use location based SMS in national public warning systems are:

  • Delivery time of Location Based SMS warning messages to groups of people in the Geo-target area is long (up to several hours)[10].
  • Complex, expensive and non-standardized/proprietary integrations are required to obtain network based location feeds for every mobile operator for every subscriber (MSISDN) in the geo target area.
  • Severe constrains by privacy legislation as for location based SMS the government need location and MSISDN of each subscriber and is therefore not compliant with the latest EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
  • No unique and intrusive sound is available for warning SMS, resulting that warning SMS message from the government is received with the same sound as any regular SMS.
  • SMS alerts are single shot messages, SMS alert messages are not repeated in the disaster area for a period of time.
  • No functionality is available when SMS is used to submit different guidance to safety message to subscribers moving from one geo-target area to the other geo-target area.
  • Only 1 severity level is available resulting that Amber alerts and test messages are received with the same severity level as for example fire or Tsunami warnings.
  • No control or configuration is available for a subscriber on their Android and IOS handsets for national public warning alert messages using SMS.
  • SMS alerts regarding public safety emergencies can be sent by everybody (no exclusivity) and forwarded by everybody (no control).

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Toxins released in fire at Venlo Business Park". NL Times. Retrieved 7 August 2018.
  2. ↑ "Technical specification ETSI TS 102 900 V1.2.1" (PDF). ETSI EMTEL. Retrieved 1 January 2012.
  3. ↑ "EU reaches agreement on European public warning solution". European Emergency Number Association. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
  4. ↑ "Alert SA scrapped by State Government after failure during catastrophic fire conditions". ABC News. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  5. ↑ "Warning: you will not be warned". Frankfurter Allgemeine Digital. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  6. ↑ "French Government abandons SAIP alert app". Le Monde. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  7. ↑ "SAIP the french alert app shuts down". Rude Baguette. Retrieved 1 June 2018.
  8. ↑ "Report Says that SMS is not ideal for Emergency Communications". cellular-news. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  9. ↑ "Belgian Location Based SMS Public Warning System fails again". Het Laatste Nieuws. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  10. ↑ "Telco's explain why SMS warning messages are delayed". GMA news online. Retrieved 13 August 2018.

Sources

  • "5G Americas White Paper Public Warning Systems in the Americas" (PDF). www.5gamericas.org. 5G Americas. July 2018.
  • "Mobile Network Public Warning Systems and the Rise of Cell-Broadcast" (PDF). www.gsma.com. GSMA. January 2013.
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