Ahead of next alert test, cities group says texts lack specificity

Before a second wireless emergency alert test went out in November, a group consisting of major emergency management agencies across Canada sent a letter to Public Safety asking for the messages to include more specific details about the events and their location. The request included such details as where exactly the natural disaster is occuring, down to the specific community, and where it is moving next. The idea is to provide all the relevant and specific information in the alert text message so as to not require the receiver to search for additional information. Otherwise, those individuals would have to have a data plan to click through the message for more details, and that isn’t always the case, the letter said. “The inability to relay specific event details through the system does not allow for immediate action and requires an individual to seek additional details through a connected device which can cause significant delays,” said the letter, which was sent on Oct. 16 to officials at Public Safety and a consortium of emergency managers in some of the country’s largest cities, collectively calling themselves the Big Cities Emergency Management Partnership. The group includes Vancouver, Surrey, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, and St. Johns. The letter was unearthed through a Wire Report access to information request, and it came just over a month before a second alert test was conducted in late November which, unlike its predecessor, reportedly went off without a hitch. The next national emergency alert test is scheduled for May 8 on TV, radio and wireless devices, with Ontario receiving it one hour after Quebec at 2:55 p.m. EST, according to Alert Ready. Before the first national alert test went out last May, CBC/Radio-Canada reported that Sampson alluded to possible work to make the alerts more specific to the location. “If we can’t say the community or if I can’t give in the detailed message a specific direction that it might be moving -- it actually could create more harm than good,” said Tom Sampson, chief of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency and author of the letter, in a phone interview. He noted that blasting an alert to a general area could create more panic among a wider population that wouldn’t be affected by the natural disaster, for example. But in a follow-up call on Friday, Sampson said he hasn’t received any assurances despite the fact he “can’t help but think they are working on this.” He said his group expressed interest and is planning on doing a public survey on social media platforms to gauge the impact of these issues. Currently, the maximum number of both French and English characters that can be processed by the system for an alert text is 615. In their response to the letter, Public Safety’s Patrick Tanguay and Alberta’s provincial co-chair of emergency management Shane Schreiber said wireless public alerting is geo-targeted and “can be very specific to a limited area of coverage,” meaning “if an emergency alert reaches someone’s wireless device, this means that person is located in an area where there is an imminent danger.” In an Amber Alert earlier this year, some of those who were woken up by a late night text blare complained that they were in a different city, several hours away, from the last known location of a possible abduction -- despite the concern of police that the suspect could have been travelling toward their city. https://twitter.com/PeelPoliceMedia/status/1096317348426985474?ref_srctwsrc%5Etfw Tanguay and Schreiber said in the letter that because the issues are related to technical telecom matters, it sent a copy of the correspondence to CRTC secretary general Claude Doucet. The CRTC did not get back in time for publishing to confirm or deny whether work is being done on the issue. Sampson also highlighted other concerns in the letter, including some alert categories not being escalated to the system and the issue of device compatibility. On the former point, Sampson said in the interview that certain environmental concerns, including “golf ball-sized” hail won’t make it to the alert system. On device compatibility, he said that less than 50 per cent of cellphones were receiving alerts, which was a concern flagged a month prior by Tanguay himself at a Senate defence committee hearing. The CRTC mandates that all devices sold in Canada by wireless service providers after April 6, 2019 must be compatible to receive emergency alerts. Still, some Canadians won’t get the alerts for other reasons, including lacking a connection to an LTE network, cell tower coverage and device software and settings, according to an Alert Ready backgrounder. But despite the concerns, Sampson said he understands the “mammoth” undertaking it is to coordinate the alert system across the country. Alberta has its own emergency alert system. “My understanding is that it’s a struggle with what the system allows in versus not in, and how much customization can occur.” He also said the alert system is better than anything we’ve had before and the large municipalities in his group are “willing to be partners” with Public Safety and others to make the system better. “Keep up the good work,” he said, “and please keep going because here’s some other pieces that you could do that would add value to Canadians.” — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Ahead of next alert test, cities group says texts lack specificity

News | 04/26/2019 5:13 pm EDT

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