64 FUTURE SHOCK Weather Alerts
Words by Neal Romanek With extreme weather now more likely than ever, the Advanced Warning and Response Network is developing a new public information service TAKE SHELTER
s a child growing up in southwestern Ohio, I remember the sound of the tornado siren located near our house and the
THEY FOUND BODIES IN THE RUBBLE, CLUTCHING MOBILE PHONES standards-based, terrestrial broadcasting for public alerts and warnings, and can distribute rich media alerts simultaneously to an unlimited number of enabled fixed, mobile and handheld devices across a television broadcast coverage area. The AWARN Alliance includes broadcasters (US Public Television, Capitol Broadcasting Company), trade organisations (Consumer Technology Association, NAB) and and efficiency. The standard is not backwards compatible, but it has a higher capacity to deliver UHD TV services, reception on a wider range of devices, IP transport, interactivity and advanced emergency alerting. Leveraging this next-generation TV technology, AWARN uses open
technology companies (LG Electronics, Triveni Digital). Although the ATSC 3.0 standard is primarily intended to be a replacement for the existing ATSC standard, mainly used in North America and South Korea, the AWARN Alliance has participants in other countries, including Japan and India. There is interest in the project from countries using other TV transmission standards, because ATSC 3.0 is the world’s first IT transmission system, which makes it fully interoperable with other IT-based systems. John Lawson is the executive director of the AWARN Alliance. He was the president of the Association of Public Television Stations working in Washington DC and in 2001 began working with FEMA (Federal and Emergency Management Agency) to develop better emergency informations services. AWARN was developed as an outgrowth of a technology called Mobile DTV, developed in the early 2010s, which was a standard that allowed direct broadcast to mobile devices. “The AWARN Alliance is developing a framework or set of best practices not just for the alerts,” Lawson explains, “but also for news and information that could be distributed over the air via ATSC 3.0 and across the internet.” Lawson believes the current US public alert system is fragmented and inefficient, and isn’t built for conveying thorough, ongoing updates to the public during an emergency. He says: “The only federal alert system, and the only one US TV and radio stations are required to carry, is an alert from the President of the United States. That goes back to the Cold War. Everything else is voluntary.” A system built on ATSC 3.0 technology won’t have to rely on cell networks, since it uses standard broadcast transmitters. In severe situations where cellular service or the
terrifying National Weather Service warning tone on the TV, accompanied by a ticker declaring a tornado warning. In the absence of more detailed information, one always imagined the worst possible scenario. As new media technologies develop, so do the means of warning the public about an approaching or immediate weather- related threat. Social media and the internet are now playing a major role in keeping people informed. But as we know, the consistency, reliability and impartiality of information on the internet can be – shall we say – a little uneven. The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance has been working with government and technology companies to create an improved public warning service for the US, using the ATSC 3.0 standard – ATSC stands for Advanced Television Systems Committee. ATSC 3.0 is a new set of technical standards and recommended practices for broadcast television that aim to make substantial improvements in performance, functionality
RED ALERT An on- screen design for the AWARN system using an actual debris flow event that happened on 2 February in Santa Babara
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