EU alert

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EU-Alert is a possibility for emergency notifications in the event of a disaster. The system is derived from the US -based Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) , formerly known as Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) .

EU guidelines

After the sirens had been dismantled in many countries, there was a need to warn the population in other ways. Omnipresent cell phones are ideal for this. In December 2018, the Council of the European Union amended the new directive on the European Electronic Communications Code ( EECC ). According to the new directive, all EU member states must set up a public warning system to protect citizens by June 21, 2022. In the event of a natural disaster, terrorist attack or other major emergency, this system is designed to send alerts to all cell phones in a certain area.

Details

ETSI's technical specification for the EU Alert is document TS 102 900 V1.3.1 of February 2019. It uses the cell broadcast service to send warning messages to mobile phones.

Depending on the country's legislation, there are different types of messages:

  • Alarm messages in three degrees of severity
    • Extreme threats: classified as threats to life and property, such as an impending catastrophic weather event, such as a hurricane or a terrorist attack.
    • Severe threats: less serious than the extreme threats; these can be the same types of situations, but on a smaller scale.
  • EU-AMBER: Missing person report , named after the American AMBER system , which has been criticized for being ineffective.
  • EU Info: public safety messages to convey recommended actions (e.g. emergency shelters or a water treatment ordinance).
  • EU exercise: test messages for national / regional / local purposes.

countries

Countries in which EU-Alert with Cell Broadcast was put into operation in a national variant:

Cell broadcast

For the end user, a cell broadcast message looks similar to an SMS and is also technically similar, so the message can be received by old and new devices alike. In contrast to SMS, the message from the radio mast is not only sent to one end device, but to all end devices within range at the same time. Radio masts can be selected for sending, making it location-based. The text message has a maximum length of 1395 characters and is displayed on the screen without user interaction and a standardized ringtone and vibration sound at the same time.

disadvantage

  • Mobile network operators in Germany currently have no active cell broadcast systems in their network
  • Only text messages possible with web links

Alternative solutions

As an alternative to EU-Alert, which is technically based on cell broadcast , other electronic communication services such as smartphone apps or SMS are possible. According to the EECC directive, several conditions must be met for this:

  • They are just as effective in terms of coverage and capacity to reach end users.
  • The alerts must be easy to receive by end users.
  • The information should also reach all visitors to the country.
  • The transmission of the notification is free of charge for the user.
  • The data protection regulations must be observed.

Smartphone app

There are several smartphone apps that warn of natural disasters. Both state and private companies that are fed with warning messages from government agencies.

All apps are dependent on a functioning cellular network or WiFi, but in the event of a disaster there are load peaks caused by phone calls, social media and website visits, e.g. As in the bombings in 2016 in Brussels , bombings in Paris in 2015 , attacks in London in 2017 , bombings in Manchester Arena and shootout in Munich in 2016 .

The multilingualism and multimedia capability are advantageous in order to e.g. B. Include maps.

disadvantage

The app needs to be actively downloaded, and the experience in many countries is that only a fraction of the population downloads an emergency app that is only activated a few times a year. In Germany, the mobile applications KatWarn and NINA reach a maximum of 2.5 million people (approx. 3% of the population) with 1,500,000 downloads. In France, the "SAIP" (Système d'Alerte et d'Information des Populations) app had around 900,000 downloads (around 1.5% of the population) and was therefore discontinued from June 2018.

Location based SMS

The advantage of SMS is that it can be received by both old and new cell phones and no changes to existing cell phones are required. Like cell broadcasts, SMS can be sent depending on location and reach all mobile phones that are switched on - regardless of whether they are from residents or visitors to the country.

Most public SMS alerts take more than a few minutes to be delivered; therefore, based on the experience of recent years, the Swedish Civil Protection Authority concluded in a report published in 2018 (it took more than 3 hours to reach all citizens of Malmö) that SMS was unsuitable.

The business association 5G Americas advised against the use of SMS as an emergency notification service in 2018.

As a result, no internationally recognized telecommunications standards body has standardized location-based SMS for public alert services.

disadvantage

  • If the network is overloaded in an emergency, the delivery of normal SMS messages cannot be guaranteed, so emergency messages should be given priority. For this, the infrastructure for the mobile network operators would have to be built.
  • You have to determine the location and the telephone number (MSISDN) of each mobile phone subscriber in order to send location-based SMS. In January 2019, the SMS-based Australian early warning system was hacked, the mobile phone numbers were copied from the database and a message was sent to them that the service had been hacked.
  • SMS notifications can be sent by anyone (no exclusivity) and forwarded by anyone (no control).
  • Mobile network operators in Germany currently have no active location-based SMS systems in their network
  • Only text messages possible with web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and the Council . In: European Union . December 11, 2018.
  2. ↑ Emergency Communications (EMTEL); European Public Warning System (EU-ALERT) using the Cell Broadcast Service on the ETSI website
  3. ↑ EU reaches agreement-public warning . In: EENA . Retrieved June 6, 2018.
  4. ↑ You are not warned . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Digital . Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  5. ↑ French government abandons the SAIP alarm app . In: Le Monde . Retrieved May 29, 2018.
  6. ↑ SAIP The French alarm app is being shut down . In: Rude Baguette . Retrieved June 1, 2018.
  7. ^ Lars Olsson: En studie av hur VMA hanterats i aktuella händelser - A study on dealing with "important communications to the public" in current events. Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap - The Swedish Civil Protection Agency, May 1, 2018, accessed February 1, 2019 (Swedish).
  8. ^ White Paper - Public Warning Systems in the Americas. 5G Americas, July 1, 2018, accessed on September 12, 2019 (English): "Point-to-Point communication techniques, for example SMS and Over-the-Top (OTT) smartphone apps, have a number of challenges that make them undesirable for PWS; they are not designed for critical authority-to-individual emergency alerting - German: Punkt-zu-Punkt-Kommunikation, z. B. SMS and OTT ( over-the-top ) smartphone apps have a number of disadvantages as a public alert system; they were not designed to alert the population. "
  9. ↑ Nick Wiggins, Megan Hendry, Amy McCosker: 'Your personal data is not safe': Emergency text service hacked - 'Your personal data is not safe': Emergency message service hacked. January 7, 2019, Retrieved February 4, 2019 (Australian English).