Weather
Photos
are courtesy of NOAA OR&R scientists, spill response experts,
and colleagues.
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Broadcasts now will include hazard information relating to
local emergencies, terrorism, nuclear incidents, 911 outages
and abducted children, in addition to traditional weather and
marine advisories.
ISS ALERT AM (fixed, networkable) and RoadRunnR (portable) advisory
radio
products have the exclusive ability to
key selectively on all 53 hazard codes, on a county-by-county
basis, and interrupt regular broadcasts with the latest
advisories and special messages from local emergency managers.
ISS stations receive all the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) event codes
and rebroadcast associated alert messages to targeted counties over local AM
frequencies. This includes, for example, any child abductions in
the states and localities using the AMBER Plan, shelter in
place, hazardous material, earthquake, fire, dust storm,
nuclear/radiation, volcanic and marine/coastal alerts.
ISS specific-area radio systems are the only ones to have these
enhanced notification functions. The ISS receiver will be continuously upgraded to decipher
any new national alert codes, if
they are developed.
Though most of the automatic warnings involve pure weather,
others could involve more. In 2001, the FCC added 21 new codes
to the EAS-alert mix. For example, people in coastal
communities were given notification codes for coastal flooding,
tropical storms and special marine warnings. People in
mountainous areas have new notifications for avalanches,
earthquakes and volcano eruptions. Residents near industrial
plants can now receive HAZMAT notifications. Here are a few
other new EAS alert codes:
- Local or civil danger emergencies.
- 911-telephone outages.
- Law-enforcement emergencies.
A notification of a terrorism threat or act could involve
a number of these EAS event codes.
How do ISS systems know which messages to broadcast
in a given area? The systems programmed with Specific Area
Message Encoding (SAME) protocols to allow targeted broadcasts within
each station's range. Stations can be
networked/synchronized to cover large
counties. |
EAS
Click here to see
more
on the Amber Plan.
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