Emergency population warning

An emergency population warning is a method where by local, regional, or national authorities can contact members of the public to warn them of an impending emergency. These warnings may be necessary for a number of reasons, including:

Many local areas use emergency population warnings to advise of prison escapes, abducted children, emergency telephone number outages, and other events.

an agreement as to what constitutes an emergency in the area served by the system. This differs from region to region depending on the local climate, geology, and the like.

an agreement as to who can initiate an alert. In some countries all warnings are transmitted by a single , while in others (such as the United States) a host of local, regional, and national agencies are authorized to initiate warnings.

command center

a system or systems by which the information can be quickly transmitted to the population.

an education program to teach the general public how to recognize an alert or what to do if a warning is broadcast.

In order to develop an effective emergency warning system, certain things are required:

United Nations program[edit]

Early warning system is the term that the International Early Warning Programme coordinated by the United Nations uses for all systems that are used to send emergency population warnings. (IEWP 2007)

The United Nations Development Programme uses the Send Word Now Emergency Notification System to alert its worldwide staff when an urgent situation arises.^[1]

(Canada)

Alert Ready

(United States)

Emergency Alert System

(Australia)

Standard Emergency Warning Signal

(Netherlands)

NL-Alert

(New Zealand)

Emergency Mobile Alert

(United Kingdom)

Mobile phone alerts in the United Kingdom

(list of types)