Situation
A severe heatwave, drought and wind gusts up to 100 km/h combined to fuel Australia’s deadliest bushfires on February 7, 2009.
The Black Saturday fires raced across the state of Victoria for several weeks, burning more than 2,000 homes over 450,000 hectares, destroying several communities and leaving thousands homeless. The bushfires injured 414 people and claimed 173 lives.
Problem
In the aftermath of the deadly conflagration, there was a national outcry that the government had failed to adequately warn the public of the impending danger. After studying the issue, the Australian government came to the conclusion that reaching most people was far more achievable than reaching everyone with any single solution.
The government decided to create a location-based public warning system that would reach over 95% of the population affected by bushfires, flooding, severe storms and other critical events.
Solution
Beginning in Victoria and then throughout the country, Australian government officials worked with Genasys, the major telecom providers, and other companies to develop a location based SMS public warning system that successfully met the government’s duty to warn the public, communities’ public safety warning expectations, and authorities’ operational and functional system requirements.
Genasys National Emergency Warning System (NEWS) is a location based SMS software technology sends geo-specific alerts to all mobile phones in crisis-affected areas. With no opt in or app download required, NEWS delivers emergency alerts to populations at risk to help keep Australia’s residents and visitors safe.
Since 2013, Genasys has partnered with Nokia to deliver more than 180 million SMS emergency notifications throughout Australia to help protect and save lives.
National Emergency Warning System
Genasys NEWS is deployed directly on multiple mobile carrier networks across SMS and CBC channels. This enables emergency management officials to send life-saving information to anyone, anywhere regardless of whether they’ve opted in to receive urgent notifications.
Messages can be delivered and managed through the Genasys cloud-based command console or mobile app. Dynamic maps, traffic information, weather forecasts, and sensors for fires, flooding, landslides, earthquakes, and other IoT capabilities are integrated into the app command console.
The powerful geo-location capabilities of NEWS allow emergency management officials to send hyper-specific instructions to people in multiple areas and monitor evacuation progress.
Genasys provides the fastest location based SMS alert service available. While other SMS alert providers take up to 15 minutes to find the mobile phones of people located in at-risk areas, Genasys finds and sends SMS alerts to thousands of phones in near real time.
