Building a More Alarming Alarm
The new Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) allows emergency communications to be sent directly to the cell phones and other mobile devices of people in threatened areas. CMAS is a partnership between FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and wireless carriers, to enhance public safety.
Conceived in the WARN (Warning, Alert and Response Network) Act of 2006, CMAS lets officials at all levels of government (federal, state and local) send three types of textlike alerts—presidential alerts, AMBER alerts and alerts to imminent life and safety threats—to targeted recipients through participating wireless providers. It ensures, the FCC says, that “emergency alerts will not get stuck in highly congested user areas, which can happen with standard mobile voice and texting services.”
That’s potentially pretty useful, but only half the battle. Alerts like those from CMAS can get people’s attention—but often don’t precipitate the actual actions people need to take to stay safe. Instead they can trigger a kind of virtual “milling,” where people delay acting to verify a threat’s credibility and seek more information before deciding what to do.
“There is a series of sense-making activities that occur as people move toward taking action,” explains Jeannette Sutton, PhD, a prominent disaster sociologist and senior researcher at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs’ Trauma, Health & Hazards Center. “First people have to receive a warning. Then they have to understand what’s in the message. Then they have to trust the source—that it’s credible information and they should act on it. Then they actually have to personalize it. And in the process of all this, they’re seeking confirmation. They’re constantly trying to determine whether it’s true, it’s credible and they should be taking action.”
Why could this be a problem for CMAS? Because of the messages’ length: Currently, they’re capped at 90 characters, with no links to further information. That leaves precious little latitude to assuage all those recipient needs.
In fact, CMAS messages may heighten confusion if people don’t know what they are. Because CMAS is a new system, there’s been relatively little public education about it. But most of the major wireless carriers are participating in the program, and their customers will get the alerts unless they opt out. That means, one day out of the blue, their phones may start to vibrate or buzz or flash, then provide only a terse warning from an unrecognized source. “People may,” says Sutton, “be at a total loss to be able to actually act.”
Providing a key link or two could help that, as could some public education beforehand. Think of AMBER alerts: Everyone knows what they are, because 1) of publicity that accompanied their development and is reinforced every time one is issued; and 2) they stemmed from the high-profile abduction/murder of a child. Right after a disaster occurs, of course, is the best time to educate people for future disasters, so America was particularly receptive to such a mechanism when it was developed.
There are other best practices for warning people, including conveying consistent information across channels and choosing a credible spokesperson. That’s generally someone authoritative and nonpolitical (firefighters get top marks for this). Ideally any message should specify multiple levels of sending authority—e.g., “This is coming from the sheriff’s office, as well as your local EMS, hospitals and the CDC”—to enhance its credibility. And it should include enough of the right information to compress that curve of understanding/trusting/personalizing/verifying. That may, ultimately, require more than 90 characters.
“A longer message that’s complete and clear and specific is really what we want to put out there,” says Sutton, who spoke on emergency warnings and their challenges at the 2012 World Conference on Disaster Management. “Within the U.S., the typical Emergency Alert System messages that break into broadcasts can be much longer. Those are the kinds of messages we’d ideally like to have delivered to people. But with these text-based messaging systems, it’s very difficult.”
Effectiveness Testing
The good news is that the feds are aware of CMAS’ possible shortcomings, and work is underway to remedy them. Sutton is part of a team charged by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate with testing the effectiveness of messages delivered through CMAS and figuring out how they can be improved.
“We’ll be looking at how can we change the content so people can move through that process of understanding and personalizing more quickly, and actually make sense of what they’re receiving,” she says. “DHS recognizes there are opportunities to improve upon the current system. Actually testing these messages will hopefully lead to much better outcomes.”
Working through the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, the team has catalogued hazards about which emergency messages might have to be sent and the kinds of protective-action messages they would entail. Next they’ll begin qualitatively and quantitatively testing such messages. Eventually they’ll apply their findings to a real-world event, with survey and interview research following people’s receipt of real messages.
Others involved with the project include Brooke Fisher Liu, associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park; Hamilton Bean, assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Denver; Stephanie Madden, project associate at START; Michele Wood, assistant professor at California State University, Fullerton; and Dennis Mileti, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Role of EMS
This all has obvious applicability to EMS and public health in the event of an outbreak or disaster with health ramifications. We’ll need to know the best ways to prompt people to wash their hands, stay indoors or whatever the case may be.
EMS can also have a role in educating citizens before the fact. Basic information on CMAS and the Emergency Alert System could easily be tied into school and civic “what to do in an emergency” presentations. EMS and fire providers are in fact among the most effective people to do this. Systems could also share information on CMAS and other public-warning mechanisms by social media like Facebook and Twitter.
The time to do this, though, is before the next disaster befalls you.
“It’s important to be part of the conversation before it’s necessary and to have already established a local network between the organizations that will be putting out and monitoring information,” says Sutton. “In crisis, those networks are not likely to change. But your followership will grow in crisis as people recognize that your agency has information that’s authoritative and useful.
“It’s absolutely not enough to try to create this channel when an event occurs. You have to be there prior to the event.”
For more:
• www.fema.gov/commercial-mobile-alert-system
• www.fcc.gov/guides/commercial-mobile-alert-system-cmas
