ATSC 3.0 AWARN Advances Can't Compensate for All EAS Problems, Lawson Says

Though ATSC 3.0 will enable advancements in emergency alerts, it can’t address the problems of an outdated, underfunded emergency alert system (EAS) operated by personnel who may be undertrained, said Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance Executive Director John Lawson at an FCBA event on ATSC 3.0 Friday. Panelists at the event also spoke about the upcoming trials of ATSC 3.0 technology and the process remaining for the new standard to go into effect.

“It’s clunky,” Lawson said of the EAS Friday. He also backed changes to the EAS in a Friday column in The Hill. Though AWARN will allow for more information-rich and targeted emergency alerts, it wouldn’t have prevented the recent false missile alert in Hawaii, Lawson said. “The alerting system did its job” in Hawaii, Lawson said: “The message got out. Maybe too well.”

“We are going to give the alert originators fantastic capabilities they’ve never had before,” but the originators have to create the content -- such as sign language translations -- for those alerts, he said. Only a tiny fraction of localities that can send out wireless emergency alerts has ever done so, Lawson said. The capabilities and the training “vary widely“ among areas, Lawson said. Different localities also use different EAS equipment with different interfaces, which makes training harder, he said. The Hawaii incident appears to have been caused by an interface issue, he said. “At some point, and Hawaii might be the turning point, the FCC, FEMA and Congress are going to have to step in and do something about this incredible disparity of training and capabilities at the local level for generating alerts,” Lawson said of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Lawson isn't sure AWARN “would have made a difference” in Hawaii, he emailed us Thursday. On the one hand, the “geographic targeting and rich media” that AWARN is known for “would not have helped because ground zero for the missile hit was not predicted and the effects of a nuclear blast would have been so extensive anyway," he said. On the other hand, the receiver “wake up” function in AWARN “could have helped in an actual emergency of this kind,” he said. “The problem as I understand it comes down to the interface between the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message and the alert originator (AO) on the ground” in Hawaii, both in sending and receiving emergency messages, emailed Lawson. The AOs “have no alternative but to use commercial software for that interface even though it sits between one government system and another government system,” he said.

“Dozens" of commercial vendors sell their "own software with their own unique interfaces,” but no FEMA or FCC “standards or certifications” exist for that software, he said. “Otherwise, I doubt the AO would have been presented with a drop down menu with ‘Test’ and ‘Actual’ stacked up together on the screen, as apparently was the case,” he said.

On the "related issue" of training, "no one ‘owns’ alerting in the U.S., and the training, technology and funding varies enormously from jurisdiction to jurisdiction," said Lawson. The false alert in Hawaii was caused by “human error operating in a flawed system.” What happened in Hawaii is “inexcusable, but unfortunately just one example of the fragility and fragmentation of America’s emergency alerting system” that calls out the need for AWARN, said Lawson. After November’s FCC vote authorizing voluntary deployment of 3.0, Lawson said the goal is to have an AWARN “beta solution” in place by early 2019 so it can be available for stations that launch 3.0 broadcasts beginning in 2019 (see 1711200023).

AWARN could help prevent a common reaction to EAS alerts that Lawson called “milling,” he said. Milling is when the public doesn’t immediately react to an alert but instead pauses and waits for more information. Since AWARN allows EAS alerts to contain a great deal of supplementary information and graphics, it could address that issue, he said. Lawson wants the EAS system to take advantage of social science to prevent that sort of reaction, and said Friday the AWARN Alliance had reached an agreement with “a major agency” for a workshop on improving EAS alerts with alert originators and social scientists

Pearl TV consortium Managing Director Anne Schelle sees 2018 as “a year of implementation” for the new TV standard. The user interface for 3.0 will be very important to the business models that evolve to take advantage of the new standard, she said at the FCBA event. Since 3.0 is intended to allow the consumption of broadcasting on multiple devices, there “needs to be commonality in the consumer experience,” she said. ATSC 3.0 isn’t operating “in a vacuum,” Schelle said. Consumers have many media choices, she said. Testing consumer-facing aspects of the new standard is the goal of Pearl’s trial effort in Phoenix and will involve partnerships with consumer electronics companies and MVPDs, she said. AWARN will also be tested in Phoenix and the other ATSC test areas in Cleveland and Dallas, Lawson said. Targeted ads and targeted emergency alerts are similar but not the same, Lawson said.

Though the ATSC 3.0 trial efforts will involve tests of the transition plan and simulcasting with 1.0, that can’t start until the order is effective. It could take months for that to happen, said FCC Media Bureau Policy Division Chief Martha Heller Friday. The order authorizing ATSC 3.0 still needs to go through Office of Management and Budget Paperwork Reduction Act approval and because it's a technical standard has to go through the FR’s “incorporation by reference” process, she said.