atmosphere in the NCR could potentially kill thousands of people in a matter
of hours. To help protect life and property it is necessary to rapidly predict
the dispersion of a toxic cloud and disseminate timely warnings to citizens
and U.S. government institutions with specific safety information. GTAS is
based upon NOAA' multi-million dollar information and communications infrastructure
and capitalizes on years of experience of warning the public of atmospheric hazards.
The Project will use advanced data systems by NOAA's Earth Systems Research
Laboratory (ESRL) Global Systems Division (GSD), the Air Resources Laboratory
(ARL), and telephone reverse-911 notification systems from the private sector.
In recent years, NOAA has conducted research into how dissemination of severe weather
warnings can be improved through reverse 911-telephone notification technology. These
studies resulted in a better understanding of the correlation between the warning lead-time
(time before event), size of the warning area, and timeliness of reverse 911 telephone
notification technology. It was through these studies that the GTAS concept was founded.
By combining NOAA' public warning infrastructure and dispersion models with private sector
reverse 911 technologies, geographically targeted warnings could be disseminated to the
public within minutes of a toxic release.
Meteorological and public safety collaboration between FEMA and NOAA will be explored and
will include an interface to the federal governments contracted reverse 911 public notification-calling
systems. The GTAS Pilot will test new public warning concepts and demonstrate the dissemination
of targeted life-threat warnings.
The primary objective of GTAS pilot is to provide rapid, reliable, coordinated and targeted warning
information to the general public, private entities and FEMA operational centers. The Pilot will
generate a specific set of FEMA/NOAA operational requirements to determine the feasibility of a
nationwide GTAS deployment to support state and local government emergency operations centers.
This paper will provide a status and update on the GTAS system and plans for possible future
national deployment.
Supplementary URL: