When an urgent event such as a tornado, earthquake, hurricane, flood, forest fire, or dangerous chemical spill strikes a community, how do citizens find out what to do? Typically, they gather information from television, radio, or computer-generated announcements; civil defense sirens; police loudspeakers; or door-to-door contacts by first responders.

During urgent events (for specific categories of such events, see Figure 1), time is truly of the essence; public safety officials need a fast, efficient, and versatile mechanism to notify citizens. Sparsely populated areas, like a wildland/urban interface zone, offer challenges with respect to time, distance, and danger to the notifying officers. (For an example, refer to the case study described in Figure 2.)
 

Conversely, densely populated urban areas may require mass notification by time-consuming door-to-door communication or civil defense sirens. While media notification reaches a large population, success depends on the time of day and on the population’s access to radio and television. Also, there has been until recently no viable way to confirm that the message has been received.

Figure 2. A TTN Case Study: Colorado’s Bobcat Gulch Fire Between June 12 and 21, 2000, firefighters and command officers from the Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest Service, the Colorado Forest Service, Larimer County, the City of Loveland Fire Department, and the Colorado National Guard—operating under a unified command structure—fought one of Colorado’s largest wildland/urban interface fires. The Bobcat Gulch fire started in the “wildland/urban intermix zone” within Colorado’s Arapahoe-Roosevelt National Forest. Contiguous to the southern edge of the Big Thompson Canyon (site of the deadly flood of 1978), the rapidly developing, weather- and terrain-driven fire eventually traveled across both public and private lands to the Cedar Park residential subdivision 12 miles west of the city of Loveland. Here, the fire destroyed 22 residential structures and private vehicles, along with 10,600 acres of public and private grasslands, brush, and timber. At the peak of firefighting activity, 1,075 fire personnel using 35 engines; 33 hand crews; six bulldozers; eight water tenders; and five helicopters fought the 11-day fire, with total costs of almost $4 million. “When an innocent campfire became the Bobcat Gulch fire, timing was critical,” said Loveland FD Command Officer Bob Skillman. “High winds, drought conditions, and difficult terrain spelled danger for many people. We used TTN to warn and inform our residents during and immediately after the incident.”

How TTN Can Help
Targeted telephone notification (TTN) eliminates these concerns. Driven by geographic positioning and a telephone-number database, TTN can broadcast a critical message regarding an urgent community event by making more than 1,000 simultaneous calls. With a programmed re-try function for busy and unanswered phones, this notification method offers real-time, customized, and targeted messaging for every conceivable urgent community event.

Ninety percent of all U.S. households have at least one telephone. Thus, TTN may be more effective than radio/television, computers, sirens, or other traditional notification methods. Also, a telephone operates on just 48 volts of direct current (48Vdc), supplied by battery from the telephone service provider’s central office, and is typically unaffected by power outages.

TTN can accommodate the unique requirements of any urgent event. For example, emergency personnel can quickly map a notification area by boundary and identify telephones by specific points within a designated radius. A priority also can be assigned to telephone numbers, which can be listed in a specific order.

Community disaster preparedness personnel can also use TTN for pre-emergency planning. Target hazards or potentially affected areas within danger or “hot” zones, such as bulk fuel-storage or tank-farm facilities, industrial manufacturers, or known floodplains, can have preestablished parameters assigned, no matter how irregularly shaped the natural or man-made boundary. A response can then be launched immediately by using either planned pre-incident or actual incident-driven boundaries.

Call lists for essential response personnel such as the mayor, city manager, disaster preparedness director, police and fire chiefs, and public works director can be set up in advance with home and/or cell telephone numbers. A callback menu offers the convenience of contacting the same telephone numbers previously notified during an original launch. This is particularly useful for status updates on complex, ongoing events and for circulating the “all-clear” message after a successful response and mitigation.

TTN versus Sirens
Sirens are the traditional notification mechanism for most communities and the medium most citizens readily recognize as a civil defense warning (see Figure 3). However, individual interpretations of the exact kind of emergency meant, plus differences in proximity to the siren, may render the effects of this notification medium marginal. Most disconcerting, though, is a conditioned response by many citizens to ignore a siren—“Is this a test or for real?” Without a specific message or exact instructions, the public may engage in counterproductive behavior or disregard the notification altogether.
 

Figure 3. Targeted Telephone Notification Versus Other Means
	Precise	Accurate	Fast	Available	Scalable	Reliable, Secure	Cost-Effective
Sirens			X	X
Media		X	X		X		X
Manual	X	X			X
Paging/Tone Alert	X		X
NOAA1			X	X
Telephone	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
1National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Successful siren notification greatly depends on message clarity, distance from the siren, time of day, and the hearing capabilities of the individuals involved (see Figure 4). And, as with television and radio notification, there is no means of verifying message receipt.
 

Figure 4: Notification of Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing People During an urgent event, when some deaf and hard-of-hearing people feel fear and frustration, they may make poor life-safety decisions if uninformed about the nature or scope of an emergency. Broadcasters and public emergency management agencies have a legal responsibility to adapt their information procedures to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing people.  For example, all television broadcasters, cable operators, and satellite television services that provide local emergency news must caption all essential emergency information or give it visually, This means more than running a simple announcement along the bottom of the TV screen. If broadcasters break into a program with live information, announce a special news update, or divulge emergency information as part of their regular news programming, they must provide all “essential” information visually.  According to the National Organization of the Deaf, the best way to provide emergency information is through a feed to a live, real-time captioner or an on-site stenocaptioner. Most television stations now run a simple, short crawl with storm warnings or school closings, for example. If this is the only emergency information they provide to all customers, then this is indeed adequate for these situations.  During an actual disaster, however, announcements must include captions or visual displays, with all essential information given visually, but need not provide word-for-word captioning. Critical or essential information might include the following: Specific details about the areas that will be affected by the emergency. Evacuation orders, detailed descriptions of the exact areas to be evacuated, and specific evacuation routes. Road closures, approved shelters, and instructions on how to take shelter in your own home, how to protect your property and possessions, and how to obtain relief assistance.  Source: National Organization of the Deaf (web site, www.nad.org).

Door-to-door notification by first responders allows customized messaging, specific face-to-face instructions to individuals, and confirmation of message delivery.   However, door-to-door and face-to-face notification is extremely labor-intensive, especially in densely populated areas. Moreover, this method places the first responder at risk inside the potential danger zone. A high-speed TTN messaging system can allay these concerns while allowing emergency responders to attend to pressing emergency duties.

Media messaging over television and radio is widespread and usually specific about the incident, mitigation activities, and instructions to citizens. This is a no-cost method that does not place emergency personnel at risk as door-to-door notification does. This method, however, is ineffective during power outages, and the message often is restricted by the time of day. Again, as with siren notification, there is no method of verifying that the targeted population has received the notification.

While TTN was developed with flash flooding, hurricanes, tsunamis, and tornado warnings in mind, public safety and civil defense authorities in Colorado have successfully used its high-volume outbound calling capability to notify a targeted population of such events as a gunman at large, disappearances of children and elderly people, forest fires, riots, escaped felons, SWAT-team deployment, hostage situations, bear sightings, a planned detonation of confiscated explosives, and school lockdowns.

The three essential components of TTN are a database management system, a mapped or predefined geographical area like a municipal or county boundary, and detailed reporting capability for post-incident analysis. Some TTN solutions are pure “service” with no hardware, dedicated ports, or telephone trunks to purchase. Thus, TTN is a powerful tool that offers a precise, accurate, fast, available, scalable, reliable, secure, cost-effective, and safe way to notify citizens during and after any-size event, in any-size community.

Either as a stand-alone tool or in conjunction with other notification methods, TTN significantly improves the chances of a successful notification, which translates into improved life safety and property conservation within a community.