Critical messaging
10
Eye of the storm
Sam Fenwick takes a look at the big trends in the world of critical messaging,
with a focus on population or company-wide alerts and paging
www.criticalcomms.com October 2019
One of the biggest recent
developments in the
world of mass alerting
was a change to the
European Electronic
Communications Code (EECC), which
requires all members of the European
Union and the European Economic
Area to have a Reverse 112 system
in place by June 2022 that can use
mobile phone operators’ networks (or
alternative electronic means, such as a
national app, if it has the same coverage
and capacity to reach end-users) to send
alerts to warn their populations about
crises and threats. It is worth noting
here that any alternative to the use of
the mobile network(s) shouldn’t require
users to log into an app or to login
or register with the authorities or the
application provider, and users should
automatically receive an SMS upon
entering a country which would tell
them how to access public warnings.
Given this requirement, it was
interesting to see the recent news (as
reported in our Who, What, Where
section) that Iceland has deployed
a national alerting system from
Everbridge, which uses existing telecom
infrastructure, with no need for enduser
registration or opt-in (Greece,
the Netherlands and Sweden are
already using Everbridge’s capabilities
in this regard). Imad Mouline, chief
technology officer for Everbridge,
all-clear, these abilities are key and if
you can’t keep a footprint of who was
there and received a message,
you won’t be able to perform any of
those actions.”
While the ability to contact the
population is important, Mouline
also highlights the benefits of having
additional alerts that people can opt in
to. “While I would like to get alerted
if I’m in an area that is impacted by a
critical event, as a parent I probably
would be more worried about being
alerted if something happens in an
area where my children are, whether
it’s their school or something else,
so for me to register/opt in to those
locations where they happen to be is
probably more important to me than
my own safety.”
While Mouline notes the importance
of preparation for those natural disasters
that have early warning signs (such as
a hurricane, with a path that can be
tracked and predicted with the aid of
satellite imagery), he adds that in some
cases “how you handle the recovery can
How you handle the
recovery can have as
much of – or more of – an
impact than the event
that caused the issue
says this is meant to cover “residents
and tourists alike and allows for
multi-lingual messaging – we can
determine extremely accurately not
only the location of the devices that
are connected in an area but also
the national origin of the SIM cards
associated with the devices and then
with the push of a single button send
out the appropriate message in the
appropriate language to the appropriate
device”. The need to be able to alert
tourists is particularly acute, given
that roughly two million visit Iceland
every year, compared with its native
population of 360,000 people.
While Mouline says the changes to
the EECC don’t specify as to whether
a national alerting system should be
able to continue communicating with
the population after the initial wave of
notifications has been sent, he sees this
as best practice. “If you’ve asked people
to evacuate an area, we suggest that you
can verify as quickly as possible that
people are indeed moving away from
the area and that any people coming
into the area who missed the initial
notification because they weren’t there
also get that notification automatically
through a geofence. You also need
to have the ability to see that people
are moving out of the area and to be
able to communicate with those that
receive the initial message. If you need
to issue a correction, a follow-up or an
Everbridge’s
Visual Command
Centre (VCC)
software and
CEM platform
allow incidents
to be easily
monitored on a
global level
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