Partnering for Safety: Enabling Alerting Authorities to Reach Affected Citizens Before, During and After Events

Increased Severe Weather events necessitate public alerting authorities to provide timely, actionable information to citizens who may be impacted, using all available communications methods. With today's sophisticated Earth observations, maps, communications and information technology, many lives are saved by early warning.  There are, however, lives that might have been saved by broadening the reach of more timely warnings to affected populations which do not currently receive alerts due to various operating challenges.

Member countries during the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Seventeenth Congress discussed several such public alerting challenges their Alerting Authorities face including the funding, development, and support of alerting technology, and ability to disseminate alerts to their citizens.  

In cooperation with the WMO's Public Weather Service (PWS) program, The Weather Company demonstrated their support of local meteorological agencies by presenting their development of the Local Alert Platform to enable authorized alerting authorities to issue Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard alerts, which will be disseminated to citizens via The Weather Company's large global communication channels and the WMO Alerting Hub.

By providing a free, cloud-hosted alerting platform, alerting authorities can focus resources on creating the necessary geo-targeted and actionable alert communication to citizens, who can act to reduce damage and loss of life from natural and man-made hazard events. Alerting Authorities also benefit from each alert carrying their Alerting Authority name, which helps reinforce their action in protecting citizens and their property and enlisting citizen support for the Alerting Authority.

This paper will review current global alerting capability, WMO's PWS alerting initiatives, and The Weather Company's Local Alert Platform efforts to enable alerting authorities worldwide.