A new effort is underway to fill a gap in the American emergency communications system that has only gotten bigger in the last decade. Currently in the U.S., the same communications system is used during disasters that is used every other day of the year. The private media sends out crews of reporters, photographers, and technicians to gather the news and disseminate it to the public. If a news-gathering organization does not have sufficient resources, or other disabilities or limitations keep it from reaching some locations, information from and pertaining to those locales is not distributed. In practice, many locations are always left out. There are never enough news-gathering resources after a disaster.

America's Emergency Network (AEN) aims to bridge that gap by providing government entities the system and ability to send messages - including video of news conferences - to a central database so they can be viewed live or stored for later access by the media, the public, or other officials or agencies. The system utilizes modern, inexpensive technology that will be accessible to all government entities, no matter the size of the population they serve. The technology is satellite-based so that it will continue to work when phone, cable, and internet lines are down.

This paper will explain the AEN project in detail along with other efforts to more clearly and fully communicate the risks and recommended actions associated with natural disasters.

Development of America's Emergency Network was undertaken in 2007 by Bryan Norcross and Max Mayfield to assure that a system exists to distribute critical messages and instructions to all Americans before and after a disaster.