ShakeAlert is Live and Running

The good news for people of California is that ShakeAlert (Early Earthquake Warning System) is finally in production and live. The sensors are all operating, the broker system is up and running, and major metropolitan areas are covered. The system will be statewide-complete by 2021 (with Oregon and Washington participating).

What this means is that any agency who negotiates the agreement with CalOES/USGS (California Governor's Office of Emergency Services) can subscribe to the brokerage system and receive the earthquake alerts in real time.

You may say: that's great, but where's my alert? The problem, of course, is in the last mile delivery. For Bay Area, for the alert to be effective, this means a sub-5 second latency delivery to your phone. That is still a problem. The latest massive WEA (Wireless Emergency Alert) test that you received and many complained about ("why is Trump sending alerts to my phone?") shows that an average latency for those that did receive it (and many did not) was around 13.5 seconds.

What's the near-future solution? CalOES is working with telecom providers to accelerate delivery and with last-mile delivery providers (yours truly, #AtHoc) to leverage multiple paths. These include not only WEA, but also push notifications, sirens, digital displays and modified weather alert radios.

The whole issue of delivering at massive scale to the public fast is still in its infancy: IPAWS/WEA all-hazard alert system were designed for nuclear attack warning, not for earthquake events, so the propagation of the message within the system (COG to COG) is not as fast as we would need it to be. Nevertheless, with the big guys stepping up (F, A and G), messages from the broker system can be ingested quickly and disseminated to the end users via push and/or by building them direct into OS.

On our side, we have deployed a system in Mexico where modified weather alert radios can pick up a special payload radio broadcast on a designated frequency in a few seconds, and the system has worked spectacularly through a ton of earthquakes in Mexico along the Pacific Coast. Next time you are in Mexico City, check out Alerta Sismica instructions in any public office :)

So, hang on, it's coming, we are just working on the best way to deliver it to you!