Communication Technologies for Public Warning

Abstract

The continuous growth of mobile communication networks and smart portable devices along with TV broadcast and streaming markets as well as social media has definitely affected every-day life. The public demands continuous and ubiquitous broadband connectivity staying always connected and accessing content anywhere at any time through a variety of devices with high processing, storage and multimedia presentation capabilities. Although traditional means for public warning are still useful, the information era we are living imposes high demands in the information flow during emergency and disaster situations in a society that is becoming more and more “information-hungry”. Indeed, this large availability of heterogeneous network infrastructures and media has proven to be a key element in public warning. The relief of recent natural disasters (e.g., Katrina and Sandy hurricanes, Fukushima earthquake and tsunami) showed that population can be alerted efficiently only if various communication media are used simultaneously. This chapter provides an overview on requirements to public warning technologies, analyses such technologies, provides a method to evaluate the effectiveness of public warning technologies and gives an overview on existing systems.