[LINK] Community Warning Systems, APCO Conference, 3 March 2009

[Tom Worthington]

At 06:02 AM 25/02/2009, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>Good one, Tom .. may i suggest that any early warning system MUST be
>local, reliable and timely. ...

Reliable yes. How local and timely is needed will depend on the 
nature of the threat.

As an example for a Pacific wide tsunami alert, "east coast of 
Australia" is local. For a tsunami you can have hours, but for an 
earthquake you have less than 20 seconds.

I have to admit that I don't know much about fires, but I would 
expect warnings are needed in minutes, rather than seconds or hours. 
Locality to within a kilometer should do, not hundreds of metres or 
hundreds of kilometers. Cell broadcast should be suitable for this.

>Having our CFA Captains/Cop/Air-Spotters issue specific, LOCAL 
>warnings would be useful and good ...

This assumes that you have the resources to detect the threat and 
issue very localized and timely warnings. There is a danger if you 
tell everyone they will be warned by phone, they will assume they 
will receive very specific and timely information they can act on and 
will sit by the phone waiting to be told what to do.

Thanks for the comments, slightly updated draft at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/02/community-warning-systems-balancing.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University