Everywhere I go and talk about public warning via mobile phones, there is lots of discussion on which technology is the best. In many cases, this discussion is driven by industry players that directly benefit from ons of these technologies. This blog is providing some background information for anyone involved in these discussions.
What is essential for a public warning service?
A public warning service is highly comparable with any other communication service, but there is one major difference. The service can save lives during major disasters or crises and therefore needs to work during major crises and disasters.
During major disasters or crises, there is a risks that communications systems are affected e.g. because the electricity system may be damaged or in case there is physical damage to mobile network infrastructures. It is very costly to design a system that is capable to cope with these effects of disasters and in practice this is only doable in exceptional cases.
Another effect of a crisis or disaster is that (mobile) networks get congested because people in an affected area are contacting friends and family and vice versa. This happened e.g. during 9/11 and hurricane Katrina in the US. There are technologies that can cope with this effect
So, in order for the public warning system to be most effective during crises and disasters, it is essential for them to cope with these critical circumstances.
Which infrastructures can cope with crisis and disasters?
Communications systems based on satellite infrastructures are probably most insensitive to effects of crises and disasters. The correlation between a crisis and disaster on earth and the functioning of a satellite system is minimal. GPS and Gallileo have the possibility to broadcast messages and most mobile phones have chipsets for these satellite systems on board.
A land-based infrastructure like a mobile network can well become unfunctional due to the effects of a crisis or disaster. However, since most countries have 2,3 or even 4 mobile networks, it is likely that a part of the population can still be reached through one or more of these infrastructures.
A major disadvantage of satellite systems is that they hardly work when the mobile phone is inside of a building. Therefore the remainder of this blog willl focus on mobile networks.
Technologies in a mobile network
Mobile networks (and mobile phones) have various technologies on board to transport information from A to B. Examples are SMS, MMS, voice, cell broadcast, internet. During normal operations, any of these technologies are suitable to transport information from A to B.
However, for a public warning system, the question is which of these technologies have maximum resistance to the effects of crisis and disasters. And is capable to deliver an alert message to a large part or all of the population of a country. The USA and The Netherlands have chosen for cell broadcast. There were several reasons why this technology was chosen, but its main advantage is that cell broadcast remains functional also in highly congested networks.
Conclusion
If you want to save lives with national public warning service, an essential requirement is that the technology works when the service is most highly needed i.e. during crisis and disasters.
This article contains a very high level outline of one of our reports. Please contact us for detailed information via www.conict.com.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten