CEASa
International
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
CEASa
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION
OF CIVIL INFORMATION SOCIETIES
Universal Public Service Emergency Notification (UPSEN) Program Announced by CEASA
Miami, Florida--(Newsfile Corp. - November 10, 2022) -
In response to numerous agency 'Calls-to-Action' for nations to provide an emergency warning capability by 2025, the Association of Cellular Emergency Alert Services, Civil Information Societies, CEASA, announces the completion of a three-year initiative to research and develop a viable operating system and funding plan that will enable all mobile networks, regardless of size or economic status, to provide revenue sustained authoritative emergency notifications as a commercial mobile public service feature.
CEASA founder and Executive Secretary, D.D. 'Bud' Weiser, today proudly announces the completion of a three-year research project conducted by the CEASA Emergency Communications Working Groups, that has addressed and resolved the technical and economic challenges to global deployment and availability of cellular broadcast emergency alert and advisory capabilities.
Mister Weiser stated that the 'Calls to Action', driven by the exponential increase in both the frequency and magnitude of natural and manmade disaster events, and the global proliferation of personal telecommunications, has served to define the logical role of the commercial mobile industry in guaranteeing at-risk mobile populations have better access to real-time authoritative emergency information.
The proven humanitarian benefit of cellular emergency alerting has made personal telecommunications synonymous with emergency management.
Cellular broadcast emergency messaging is now operating in over twenty countries and has been credited with saving thousands of lives. However, the costs related to network deployment of cell broadcast technologies and the 'nation states' administrative investments has restricted its' availability to only highly developed nations. As a result of these costs over eighty percent of the global mobile markets including many of the most vulnerable populations have no access to mass emergency messaging.
The program provides a more economical alternative to the current 'open-gateway' management systems with all funding provided by the regulatory nations' imposition of a modest surtax on the mobile users who are the direct beneficiaries of UPSEN.
The UPSEN Program provides a fully automated cellular broadcast overlay messaging capability allowing any mobile network to instantly receive and passively send multilingual emergency notifications and critical event information published by UN recognized agencies to the mobile populations in targeted geographic regions, with no public investment.
Initial implementations of UPSEN are planned for Africa, South America and the Caribbean regions beginning in 2023, with all 220 global mobile networks UPSEN enabled and operational by 2025.
CEASAssociation is a not-for-profit volunteer society of civil emergency information engineers, academics and disaster management professional dedicated to advancing development of personal telecommunications for humanitarian benefit.
The association members are internationally recognized for initiating the use of mobile multicast technology to deliver passive cellular emergency alert messaging service.
Media Contact:
+1.727.277.3749 (voice + text)
ddweiser@ceasagroup.com
For more information on UPSEN visit:
UPSEN is a registered trademark of the CEASA association
SOCAL MEDIA ALERTS SYRIANS
The U.N. special envoy to Syria warned on Thursday that 3 million civilians could be at risk if the Assad regime launches a large-scale invasion against rebels in Idlib province. Violence can happen at a moment's notice in Syria, but two Americans have designed a way to warn civilians before an airstrike.
John Jaeger and Dave Levin grew up in Chicago and Dallas, where they worked jobs in finance and consulting. But now they've become unlikely heroes in Syria's seven-year-long civil war, where they have saved lives.
"These are preventable deaths, and that's why we do what we do," Jaeger said.
Back in 2012, Jaeger had taken a job with the State Department, deployed to Turkey to help Syrians displaced by the civil war. But as he watched the carnage from the sidelines, he grew frustrated.
"The idea was essentially to tell people before an airstrike could reach them, so that they could take mitigating action and save their lives," Jaeger said.
The idea was that simple. As the Syrian regime bombed civilians, Jaeger and Levin wanted to warn people that warplanes were on the way, so they could take cover in shelters and basements.
There were already dozens of Syrians who were spotting war planes, and putting out alerts over walkie talkies. So Jaeger and Levin recruited them, asking them to send reports by phone. They combined that reporting with their system that uses artificial intelligence, including data on aircraft speeds, weather and social media posts.
"Then that immediately feeds back into the algorithm to predict where planes are going to go," Levin said.
Their computer-generated alerts from their company, Hala Systems, now reach more than 2 million Syrians, they believe, via warnings on smartphones and air raid sirens connected to their system. In the battle for Syria's last major rebel stronghold, it will give civilians a chance of survival.
Hundreds of Syrian White Helmets evacuated to Jordan through Israel
"We couldn't breathe": Inside Douma, Syria, the site of apparent chemical attack
But Jaeger and Levin say the real heroes are people like Abdul Razzaq, one of their plane spotters and a former elementary school teacher."I fill with happiness when I save a soul of a civilian, of a child, of a woman," he said.
"This is the most important thing i've ever done in my life and I think John would say the same," Levin said.
Learn more about Levin and Jaeger's company Hala Systems on their website.
© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CELLCAST TECHNOLOGIES FILES SUIT IN FEDERAL COURT AGAINST FEMA WIRELESS EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION SYSTEM
Claims against the 'Open Gateway' use of Patents
Nov 2, 2015
In a suit filed in D.C.Federal Clames Court by REED SMITH LLP, CellCast Technologies, a Saint Louis firm, requests compensation from the DHS for violation of five patents owned by their InvisionIT division. Originally authored by CEASA Advisory Board Members, the patents reflect the method used by the Intregrated Public Warning System, IPAWS, Open Gateway.
In an statement by a CellCast attorney, it was stressed that the suit will not affect the operation of the Wireless Emergency Notification Service, WENS, or the participating mobile operators who provide the messaging service as a voluntery public service feature.
A copy of the suit is available in the Membership section.
House Passes IPAWS Update
Bill was passed in the Senate in 2015March 22, 2016
IPAWS allows emergency authorities to create customized messages, authenticates them and delivers them to various platforms. The new bill is designed to boost and expand IPWAS, which delivers emergency alerts to multiple platforms—i.e. TVs, radios, cell phones, computers and electronic billboards—boost training and increase collaboration.
“NAB applauds the House’s bipartisan passage of this legislation strengthening the public’s access to important emergency warnings and alerts,” said Dennis Wharton, NAB executive vice president of communications. “As ‘first informers,’ local radio and television stations understand the crucial need for up-to-the-second information when danger is near. We thank the House Transportation & Infrastructure and Homeland Security Committees, and Senators Ron Johnson and Claire McCaskill, for their leadership on this bill and we support President Obama’s swiftly signing it into law.”
THE CELLULAR EMERGENCY ALERT SERVICE associations
June 22. 2015
The Honorable Michael McCaul, Chairman
House Committee on Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20515
The Honorable Ron Johnson, Chairman
U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs
Washington, DC, 20510
Re: H.R. 1738
MIR 15305
Chairmen:
The Cellular Emergency Alert Service associations-CEASa-would like to extend our thanks to you and your respective committees for recognizing the contribution of the Wireless Industry’s contribution to enhancing public safety and the recognized need to improve and modernize the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System.
We respectfully submit there are two related issues with regard to modernization of IPAWS in general and the Wireless Emergency Alert service in particular.
In 2008 our society’s Secretary General, Mr. Mark Wood, introduced to the UN’s ISDR conference to need to expand cell-broadcast emergency notification functionality to include post-event information dissemination as continuity of authorized alert and warning messaging. This advancement of CMAS is now adopted in both ETSI and the wireless industry’s 3GPP standards as CMAS Level 4, identified as US INFO for participation by the US networks.
Further, Secretary Wood proposed that in compliance with UN ISDR policy, CMAS Level 4 should be provided as a commercial feature by the mobile operators.
As the current WARN Act only affects the delivery of alert and warning notification, the expansion of WEA to provide Commercial Mobile Information Service would not require legislation and would serve to compensate wireless networks for use of their private assets by public agencies.
As WEA is currently structured as a ‘voluntary mandate’ (SIC), there is no commercial sustainability to the program, placing its continued availability and modernization in jeopardy.
The unquestioned need for expansion of IPAWS to address the need for post-event communications was clearly documented by the inflation of costs in FEMA’s post-Super Storm Sandy recovery efforts.
Thank you for your recognition and dedication to importance Cell Broadcast Service for humanitarian benefit.
Respectfully submitted-the CEAS association of Information Societies,
D. D. Weiser, Director
Cc: The Honorable Gus Billirakis
The Honorable Claire Mc Caskill
The Honorable Michael McCaul
The Honorable Curtis Clawson
Meredith Baker CTIA President/CEO
FCC Chair Admiral David Simpson
CRUCIAL EMERGENCY ALERTING
British APCO Journal I June 2014
Mark Wood, Secretery General CEASa International, former UN Disaster Coordinator and former Senior Lecturer of Mobile Network Design at the Ericsson Institute in Stockholm – is one of a small group of cell broadcast experts in the world.
Mark explains that cell broadcast (CB) is a communications facility that is built into the control channel of a cell and – crucially – is not part of the mainstream voice or SMS traffic system.
The cell uses this facility to communicate technical details to a mobile phone details such as frequency and power that the phone requires to configure itself to work with that cell.
Interestingly differences to an SMS delivery system.
First difference is that the cell doesn’t iscriminate
between phones nor does it need phone numbers to send its message(s) – it broadcasts these messages to all mobile phones in its area (a bit like a radio transmitter).
Secondly, unlike with an SMS, the CB system cannot ascertain whether a message has actually been received.
Because CB sits outside the normal traffic system of a network, it remains unaffected by the type of network congestion that is associated with largescale emergencies or events such as New Year ’s Eve in central London.
US studies showed that large-scale SMS transmissions could block voice calls as well as SMS messages on a mobile network.
In fact, CB is so oblivious to network traffic that it will deliver any number of messages within the same timeframe of around 7 seconds. So whether it be 5,000 or 6 million text alerts, they will be delivered in around 7 seconds. Furthermore, delivering tens of millions of messages by CB cannot crash the network (either voice or text), no matter how overloaded the network is at the critical moment.
It is these two characteristics that have caused CB to be chosen over SMS as the emergency alerting method of choice for a number of countries around the world – USA, South Korea, Japan, The Netherlands, Turkey, Taiwan, Israel and Chile. A number of other countries are preparing for it too. The EU has been studying CB for a long time, and a standard is already in existence for the European Public Warning System: ETSI TS 102 900 V1.1.1 (2010-10):
Technical Specification Emergency
Communications (EMTEL); European Public
Warning System (EU-ALERT) using the Cell
Broadcast Service.
To quote from this ETSI document: ‘Not only the
EU project has concluded that Cell Broadcast (CB) would be the bearer technology best suited for the purpose of EU-Alert, but also ETWS [the tsunami and earthquake public warning system used in Japan] and CMAS [the Wireless Emergency Alert Public Warning system used in the USA] are based on the Cell Broadcast Service as specified in 3GPP TS 123 041.’
Civil Emergency Advisory Services Association (CEASA) Announces Initiative To Launch Commercial Mobile Information Services (CMIS)
Program Will Provide Post-Event Recovery Information During the 2014 Hurricane Season
PR Newswire Civil Emergency Alert Services Association
ORLANDO, Fla., April 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --
The Civil Emergency Alert Services Association (CEASA) announced today that they will support the launch of a Commercial Mobile Information Services (CMIS) beta trial during the 2014 hurricane season. CMIS will use cell broadcast geo-targeting technology, which can send text messages to all smart devices and cell phones in specific locations.
The devastating and extended impact of Hurricane Sandy, as well as the likelihood of increased 'superstorm' activity in the Gulf and Mid-Atlantic states, has also raised interest by power companies and other utility providers for an 'at-hand' solution for improving customer relations during power outages.
Cell broadcast technology is currently used for Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) including National Weather Service (NWS) warnings and AMBER Alerts. It is supported by the FCC, FEMA, and the nation's wireless carriers, but is currently limited to use by government agencies. The CMIS trial will allow access by FEMA-approved Collaborative Operating Groups (COG) for public safety-related announcements.
CEASA Group has secured use of the gateway middleware necessary to enable an end-to-end pilot solution by June 1, 2014. The operational system is modeled after the successful trial of Cell Broadcast Short Messaging Services (CBSMS) conducted by the state of Florida in 2008. While it does not require additional technology or infrastructure investments, the trial will require FEMA to allow the mobile operators in federally-declared disaster locations the option to broadcast public safety advisory messages over the WEA alert and warning 'channel' for the duration of the beta pilot. A detailed cost-benefit analysis will be conducted at the conclusion of the pilot to determine if the feature can produce commercially-sustained and ongoing revenue.
In a conference call with industry partners this morning, CEASA Executive Director D. D. Weiser said, "Our decade-long advocacy in the 2000's led the FCC and FEMA to embrace cell broadcasting as an unparalleled technology to communicate with the public during emergencies. Today, with the infrastructure already in place and saving lives across the country, we are encouraging the nation's wireless carriers to consider expanding the use of their resident cell broadcast functionality."
About CEASA
CEASA is a global organization of emergency management and telecommunications professionals dedicated to the adaptation of emerging technologies for humanitarian applications. The organization, based in the United Kingdom, is recognized by the United Nations as an accredited Civil Information Society (CIS) and is supported by a network of chapters worldwide.
TWO AMERICANS DESIGN WARNING SYSTEM TO PROTECT SYRIAN CIVILIANS
(August 29, 2018)
The U.N. special envoy to Syria warned on Thursday that 3 million civilians could be at risk if the Assad regime launches a large-scale invasion against rebels in Idlib province. Violence can happen at a moment's notice in Syria, but two Americans have designed a way to warn civilians before an airstrike.
John Jaeger and Dave Levin grew up in Chicago and Dallas, where they worked jobs in finance and consulting. But now they've become unlikely heroes in Syria's seven-year-long civil war, where they have saved lives.
4G LTE Security Flaws
(March 2 & 5, 2018)
Vulnerabilities in the 4G LTE wireless telecommunications standard could be exploited to send phony emergency alert messages to mobile phones and launch at least nine other attacks. Researchers from Purdue University and the University of Iowa have published a paper describing tool they have developed to detect these security issues.
Read more in:
- www.zdnet.com: New LTE attacks can snoop on messages, track locations and spoof emergency alerts
- www.cyberscoop.com: Researchers uncover 4G LTE exploits that can be used to spy, spoof and cause panic
- arstechnica.com: LTE security flaws could be used for spying, spreading chaos
- www.scmagazine.com: Researchers: LTE vulnerabilities enable attackers to disrupt service, send fake emergency alerts
- assets.documentcloud.org: LTEInspector: A Systematic Approach for Adversarial Testing of 4G LTE