We already know that in Spain things in the palace go slowly and, to continue with the proverb, to show a button: last July the Government announced that it was in the process of designing and awarding a national emergency system with digital alerts and now, after a few months, the public tender has just been resolved .
The winning company was Everbridge , a software company that already had a dedicated solution. ‘Public Alert’ is a platform that allows public authorities to create and control alerts to the population according to geographic objectives and directed to an affected area or at a national scale.
How to configure the emergency function on your iOS and Android smartphone.
This multinational, therefore, will be in charge of managing the next National Public Alert System of Spain with coverage throughout the territory through Cell Broadcast , which will connect directly with the mobile operators Telefónica , Vodafone , Orange and MásMóvil and these, at their own expense. Once, they will inform their users directly – probably via SMS, but this has not yet been specified. The solution also includes the publication of alerts on a web platform and a mobile alert application developed by Everbridge.
What is the National Public Alert System of Spain?
When a major emergency occurs, such as a flood , a strong earthquake or even a cyber attack , the Government will be able to alert all citizens in the affected area via mobile .
“Everbridge’s Public Alert Solution enables government organizations and public safety agencies to immediately communicate with everyone in the affected area during a critical event regardless of their nationality, place of residence or type of mobile device ,” explains Vernon. Irvin, Everbridge Executive Director of Sales.
The alert notices will include both the reasons for the same as well as different measures to be taken and rules to comply with to “act decisively in specific emergencies.” The successful bidder’s platform complies with all data privacy regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (RGPD) , and will offer agility to emergency services to send alerts as quickly as possible.
Image shared by the National Police of their new ‘flying patrol car’.
“ The configuration of the system takes advantage of the characteristic of Spain as the European country with the most smartphones per inhabitant -55% in our country, when the European average is 46% -. The percentage of Spaniards with a mobile phone is also 96%, higher than countries such as the United States, France or China ”, they say from Everbdrige.
Everbridge wants its disaster alert system to provide coverage and service to 99% of the population . This company already provides this type of service in eight European countries, such as the United Kingdom and Estonia .
Why has it been launched?
The deployment of this system responds to the obligations dictated by the European Code of Electronic Communications , which establishes that the member countries of the European Union must have a system of these characteristics as of June 2022. Therefore, although the Government does not has specified the date on which it will be operational, Europe obliges Spain to have it operational, at the latest, in the middle of next year.
The system has already been launched in other countries worldwide , such as South Korea , which uses a cellular broadcasting solution, or the type of the Australian SMS alert system .
As indicated by Moncloa , “the project is financed by the Recovery Plan funds and has been launched thanks to the agreement signed on July 8 between the Ministries of Economic Affairs and for Digital Transformation and the Ministry of the Interior” .
How does it work?
The technology for alerts Everbdrige is based on two tracks: the systems ‘cell broadcast’ or cell broadcasting and location based SMS .
Both technologies take advantage of carrier networks, just in different ways . In the first case, the emergency operator of each country or region sends a message to the radio cells instead of to a specific terminal and, depending on the cells to which the shipment is directed, this communication will reach everyone located in that geographic area.
This system has an important advantage: it uses a specific channel for its communications, so that if the networks are saturated – for example, due to a peak in calls due to the moment of crisis – the alerts could continue to reach their recipients .
Both the National Police and the Civil Guard use technology in their patrols.
While this is the safe bet, as we say, the company will also implement a second solution: location- based SMS , without a specific dedicated channel, but allowing people to respond to emergency services. This complementary service can be very useful for users if they need to communicate at a certain time, for example in the evacuation phase .
In general, this formula is not used as the main solution because it entails more problems , such as that the diffusion is slower – the alert can take up to ten minutes to reach a group of millions of people – or that it can be affected by a collapse in mobile networks. Likewise, it also entails problems in the field of cybersecurity , since it is more susceptible to scams and false claims -because the delivery method can be imitated with an SMS to use-. Finally, there are many users who carry mobile notifications in silence, so there is a risk that the warning goes unnoticed.
