Emergency Messaging to General Public via Public Wireless Networks

Scope And Background

This research and the resulting project therefore have first been triggered by the concept of using widely adopted modern ubiquitous personal communications and messaging facilities such as those offered by public wireless networks. Whereas wireless networks such as those based on TETRA have the same properties, they are conceived and used as private networks usually by the public authorities themselves. It should be highlighted that thanks to licensing requirements set by the national or multinational regulators, very high geographical coverage is granted in many countries, and wireless terminal penetration is very high.

The research has also been triggered by flaws found in Denmark by special interest groups in terms of the warning systems coverage in space and time, with the corresponding political and media outcry resulting from such issues being brought to the limelight. It was found that, after everything else possible had been done, there would still in Denmark be one out of thousand individuals, especially hearing impaired, who could not be warned with the planned national emergency resources (Beredskabsstyrelsen, 2005). Even if the terrain is not the issue in Denmark, just because of life behaviours, at any time 1/5 of the population are outside the range of the acoustic horns or not able to listen to radio/TV (Beredskabsstyrelsen, 2005). Also, it was found that over 60% of the population nowadays does not know the meaning of the emergency horns signals or do not react to them, as evidenced by the large flow of requests to emergency numbers after routine tests.