Mobile Warning Technologies Have Limits, CTIA Says of Earthquake Alerts
CTIA warned the FCC that the use of the wireless emergency alert (WEA) system to send earthquake warnings to people in less than three seconds is likely a nonstarter. Congress asked the FCC to file a report on deployment of earthquake early warning (EEW) systems by Sept. 18 (see 1604080057) and comments were due at the FCC Monday in docket 16-32.
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CTIA said what Congress is asking isn’t possible with current technology. “While CTIA shares the Commission’s and Congress’ goal of providing consumers with an early earthquake warning system, WEA was not designed to accomplish what Congress and the Commission hope to achieve with EEW systems,” the wireless association said. “In fact, there currently exists no emergency alerting platform that provides or can be expected to provide three-second latency.”
Japan’s Earthquake and Tsunami Warning Service has the capacity to broadcast warnings over wireless networks, CTIA said. But carriers require four to 10 seconds, not three, to send the message to subscribers, the group said. “In other words, the vast majority of nations have not developed a comprehensive EEW notification system that transmits across commercial mobile networks, and the one nation that has deployed such a system (Japan) is not able to deliver alerts within the three-second latency requirement contemplated by Congress,” CTIA said.
AT&T agreed with CTIA, citing its long experience with the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System and WEA system. “This extensive experience and knowledge leads AT&T to conclude that the IPAWS and WEA system have no role to play in an EEW system requiring a less than three-second performance metric,” AT&T said in a filing. “The point is that these existing systems work differently from an EEW alert system and are unsuitable for the transmission of earthquake alerts where speed is of the essence.” But AT&T also said mobile alerts have a role to play post-earthquake, such as providing information about shelter locations.
Last summer, a study by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions said WEA warnings are probably the most effective way of notifying people of a severe earthquake. “EEW would be most effective in a case where the earthquake begins on a fault far from your location and the rupture propagates toward your location,” the report said. “For example, this would be the case for an earthquake beginning at the northern end of the San Andreas Fault and rupturing south towards the San Francisco Bay Area, or an earthquake starting near the Salton Sea and rupturing north toward Los Angeles.”
But ATIS also concluded that alerts can't be immediate. “While WEA is designed to provide imminent threat alerts, this system is not designed for nor can be modified to handle time-sensitive alerts,” ATIS said. A requirement of delivery of a warning even within 20 seconds from receipt of an EEW notification “is beyond the ability of WEA,” the report said. Alerts on mobile devices have a big role in warning the public of natural disasters, experts said during a February White House summit on earthquake resilience (see 1602020075).