Japan Tests New Emergency Alert Web Portal

This week, Japan kicked off a month-long pilot of a new central Web portal used to communicate critical information during an emergency. The site will be a central location used for disseminating official communications -- collected from a large number of government agencies -- about anything that could affect citizens' safety during an emergency -- power outages, weather systems, transportation blocks, etc.

The Web portal also includes a system that will allow regular people to leave personal messages about their own individual status. (Messages like "I'm safe at my mom's" can help squash hysteria during disaster situations.) During the horrific earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last year, many people used Twitter to let their loved ones know where they were or to convey information about the status of their location. This government Web portal would make a similar service available to all of the people who don't have a Twitter account.

If anyone can get a disaster recovery Web portal right, it's Japan. The country has been praised worldwide for being a leader in disaster preparedness. They even have a holiday for it. They recognize the anniversary of the earthquake that nearly destroyed Tokyo in 1923 by conducting emergency safety drills. And it isn't just civil servants who get involved. This past weekend, regular citizens were getting lessons in operating fire hoses.

In other parts of the world, like the US, governments are beginning to use text messaging as another way to issue emergency alerts. The benefit to a system like this is immediacy -- a person receives a message without having to first take any action, like visiting a Website or turning on the television. However, there are plenty of drawbacks.

The principal drawback is that in emergencies, frantic people looking for help or for loved ones make so many calls at once that phone lines often get overloaded and clogged until no calls get through at all. (I have very clear memories of experiencing that on September 11, 2001.) So phone networks are generally not a reliable way to deliver emergency alerts widely.

So why would the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deliver emergency alerts via text messages? Well, they're not exactly text messages. The FCC has partnered up with cellular carriers to create the commercial mobile alert system, and although a CMAS alert will look a lot like a text message, the FCC explains the difference:

CMAS alerts are transmitted using a new technology that is separate and different from voice calls and SMS text messages. This new technology ensures that emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested user areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services.

That's the upside of not really being a text message. The downside however, is that, unlike a text message, a CMAS alert doesn't try very hard to reach you. As Verizon Wireless explains, "If you are engaged in a voice or data session when alerts are released, you will not receive the alert."

You will also not receive the alert unless you are using a carrier that participates in the service and a phone that's compatible with it.

On the plus side, if you can't receive actual alerts, then that means you can't receive test alerts. There is no earthly way that CMAS alerts could be nearly as obnoxious as the ones that disrupt television viewers -- "This is a test of the emergency broadcasting system. This is only a test." Nevertheless, our own managing editor, David Wagner, receives these CMAS test alerts on his phone, finds them terribly annoying, and will be happy to complain heartily about them in the comment boards below.

So it isn't a perfect system, and neither is Japan's new Web portal. After all, just like phone lines, Website traffic can get clogged -- perhaps by a flood of legitimate traffic or perhaps by an attacker who decides to really stir up trouble by whacking the emergency Web portal with a denial-of-service attack.

Of course, there is no one perfect system -- you need a combo attack. What methods do you think are most effective? As a citizen, how would you prefer to receive emergency alerts from the government? And as a CIO, what method do you think would be most effective and/or easiest to manage? Let us know below.

Source: http://www.enterpriseefficiency.com/author.asp?section_id=1134&doc_id=250157&f_src=enterpriseefficiency_sitedefault

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