WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) and One Media 3.0, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, have launched the nation’s first pilot project to use Next Generation Broadcast to disseminate Advanced Emergency Information.
“The jurisdictions that we represent are always looking for more and better ways to inform the public during emergencies,” said Scott Boggs, managing director, homeland security and public safety at COG. "We see NextGen AEI as a powerful new tool for both public warning and providing vital information for recovery after disaster strikes. Because it uses over-the-air broadcast signals, AEI can be especially effective for reaching underserved audiences.”
According to Jerald Fritz, executive vice president strategic and legal affairs at One Media 3.0, the pilot project is an opportunity to showcase the life-saving capabilities of NextGen Broadcast.
“Sinclair and One Media 3.0 have developed an open-source broadcaster app that provides a range of new consumer services, with AEI being the most powerful from a public service perspective," Fitz said. "Sinclair has made a huge investment in local journalism at our stations across the country. Working with the COG to voluntarily deploy AEI through the 7 News newsroom paves the way to extend our ‘first informer’ role to many more markets,” he said.
The pilot program will provide free, over-the-air redundancy to emergency messaging currently sent by local governments via text, email. social media, and other system platforms.
One Media 3.0, through its affiliated WJLA (7 News) newsroom, will also provide enhanced, rich media supplements to those emergency messages that meet its newsworthy criteria.
Initially, the pilot will focus on emergency messages from Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. The pilot will be expanded to other area jurisdictions in coming months. The pilot program will initially use the facilities of WJLA’s sister station in Washington, WIAV, and then migrate to WJLA 7 News with its broader reach.
NextGen TV standard, aka ATSC 3.0, enables exceptionally advanced alerting and informing tools, One Media and COG stressed.
Rather than simple text crawls across a TV screen that a tornado is approaching, for example, NextGenTV powers a much more robust signal that can render real time doppler radar, weather images, evacuation routes, shelter locations, flood maps – and do it in multiple languages, the backers of the pilot program said.
In addition, the messages can be geo-targeted to just the area affected by the emergency warning based upon inputs by the viewer. Not limited to weather emergencies, the new tool will be employed for virtually all emergencies including civil unrest, hazardous spills, and AMBER Alerts.
This Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) can include both alerts and vital recovery information received on a wide range of enabled consumer devices and connected vehicles. Because TV stations operate independently of the cellular network and have backup power, they can continue to distribute emergency messages even when the cellular network and electric grids are down.
The pilot is an outgrowth of the AWARN Washington, DC Roundtable, which brought together local TV broadcasters and emergency managers from across the National Capital Region. The discussions centered on the voluntary deployment of Advanced Emergency Information using the NextGen platform and ways to continue COG’s longtime commitment to supporting emergency communications.
AWARN Executive Director John Lawson said the National Capital Region pilot is an extension of a dialogue at the national and grassroots levels between broadcasters and emergency managers in several regions.
“Through our AWARN roundtables, we found that technology is only the front-end of the conversation,” Lawson said. “Just as important is developing the relationships between local stations and emergency managers to actually use the technology. The Washington AEI pilot is a testbed for both technical capabilities and the working relationships between broadcasters and emergency managers that are vital to keep the public safe,” he said.
Anyone in the WIAV (display Channel 58) viewing area who has a NextGen TV set or a NextGen set-top converter box should be able to receive the emergency messages from WIAV. As other devices, including NextGen-enabled phones, are deployed, those too will benefit from this sophisticated new emergency tool.
