Rethinking the Future of Wireless Emergency Alerts: A Comprehensive Study of Technical and Conceptual Improvements

The Wireless Emergency Alerting (WEA) service is a standards-based transport and presentation channel used nationwide in the United States. The service can deliver short text warnings to wireless subscribers through a cell broadcast mechanism. For emergency situations in which a broadcast modality and a single, short text message are sufficient to convey information, the WEA service can be efficient and effective. However, the content to be delivered may necessitate more than a single, unchanging short message. In this research, we first examine the WEA service from the perspective of alert originators. We then use the insights gained to explore the efficacy of a range of potential extensions to the service. The extensions mainly address the importance of user context and the ability to create awareness through careful attention to the integrity of the vital information. We evaluated these extensions using a WEA emulation testbed in two public usability trials. We present an analysis of the broad range of improvements as a basis for further research into improving the service. We conclude that (1) precise geo-targeting augmented with location information and maps is an important aspect of capturing users' context, and (2) presenting information in a digested form can markedly improve the actionability and the accuracy of interpretation.