PUBLIC RESPONSE TO ALERTS AND WARNINGS ON MOBILE DEVICES
SUMMARY OF A WORKSHOP ON CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH GAPS
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington D.C.
www.nap.edu
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the Department of Homeland Security with assistance from the National Science Foundation under award number IIS-095654. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-18513-4
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-18513-0
Cover: Wireless tower with radio waves. Used with the permission of Shutterstock Images, image ID 66493861.
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COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC RESPONSE TO ALERTS AND WARNINGS ON MOBILE DEVICES: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND RESEARCH GAPS
ELLIS STANLEY,
Dewberry LLC, Western Emergency Management Services,
Co-Chair
JEANNETTE N.R. SUTTON,
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs,
Co-Chair
LOUISE COMFORT,
University of Pittsburgh
JOHN HARRALD,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
RICHARD G. MUTH,
State of Maryland Emergency Management Agency
DAVID ROPEIK,
Ropeik & Associates
JOHN H. SORENSEN,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Staff
JON EISENBERG, Director,
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Associate Program Officer
SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
ROBERT F. SPROULL,
Sun Labs,
Chair
PRITHVIRAJ BANERJEE,
Hewlett Packard Company
STEVEN M. BELLOVIN,
Columbia University
SEYMOUR E. GOODMAN,
Georgia Institute of Technology
JOHN E. KELLY III,
IBM Research
JON M. KLEINBERG,
Cornell University
ROBERT KRAUT,
Carnegie Mellon University
SUSAN LANDAU,
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
PETER LEE,
Microsoft Corporation
DAVID E. LIDDLE,
US Venture Partners
WILLIAM H. PRESS,
University of Texas, Austin
PRABHAKAR RAGHAVAN,
Yahoo! Research
DAVID E. SHAW,
D.E. Shaw Research
ALFRED Z. SPECTOR,
Google, Inc.
JOHN A. SWAINSON,
Silver Lake Partners
PETER SZOLOVITS,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PETER J. WEINBERGER,
Google, Inc.
ERNEST J. WILSON,
University of Southern California
Staff
JON EISENBERG, Director
VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Associate Program Officer
SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant
RENEE HAWKINS, Financial and Administrative Manager
HERBERT S. LIN, Chief Scientist
EMILY ANN MEYER, Program Officer
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer
ERIC WHITAKER, Senior Program Assistant
ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer
For more information on CSTB, see its website at http://www.cstb.org, write to CSTB, National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20001, call (202) 334-2605, or e-mail the CSTB at cstb@nas.edu.
Preface
This report presents a summary of the Workshop on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings on Mobile Devices: Current Knowledge and Research Gaps, held April 13 and 14, 2010, in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings on Mobile Devices: Current Knowledge and Research Gaps. The complete statement of task for the committee is provided in Box P.1.
The workshop was structured to gather inputs and insights from social science researchers, technologists, emergency management professionals, and other experts knowledgeable about how the public responds to alerts and warnings, focusing specifically on how the public responds to mobile alerting.
Although this document was prepared by the above-named committee on the basis of the workshop presentations and discussions, it does not, in keeping with NRC guidelines for developing report summaries, necessarily reflect a consensus view of the committee. Additionally, these summaries should not be taken as remarks made solely by the scheduled session speakers, because the discussions included remarks offered by others in attendance, and the summaries of the workshop sessions provided in the chapters of this report are a digest both of the presentations and of the subsequent discussion. In keeping with the workshop’s purpose of exploring an emerging topic, this summary does not contain findings or recommendations.
BOX P.1 Statement of Task The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) program is intended to provide alerts and warnings to over 80% of the American population on mobile devices (cell phones and pagers). An ad hoc committee will plan and conduct a public workshop to examine current knowledge and research on how the public responds to alerts and warnings with a specific focus on mobile alerting, examine related work on mobile and text messaging, and identify research gaps relevant to the CMAS program. The workshop will feature invited presentations and discussion. An unedited transcript of the event will be provided to DHS and placed in the project’s public access file. A workshop report will be issued. |
This workshop report reveals (1) the extensive body of knowledge regarding alerts and warnings and the public response and action before, during, and after emergency situations; and (2) the many questions that arise when considering how to apply this knowledge to the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS), which is currently under development—and more generally to the use of mobile and other new information and communications technologies for alerts and warnings.
Chapter 1, which covers the first two sessions of the workshop, provides a brief overview of the CMAS program and its objectives, as well as background information on the alerting process and public response. Chapters 2 through 5 provide integrated summaries of the session presentations and the discussion that followed, organized by topic. Chapter 6 summarizes the research questions identified during the breakout sessions and subsequent plenary discussion. Appendix A presents the workshop agenda, and speaker biosketches are provided in Appendix B. Appendix C provides the biosketches of the committee and staff.
Ellis Stanley and Jeannette N.R. Sutton,
Co-Chairs
Committee on Public Response to Alerts and Warnings on Mobile Devices: Current Knowledge and Research Gaps
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Robert Kraut, Carnegie Mellon University,
Leslie Luke, San Diego County Office of Emergency Management,
Dennis Mileti, University of Colorado, Boulder,
Helena Mitchell, Georgia Institute of Technology,
George Percivall, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.,
Ramesh Rao, University of California, San Diego, and
Michelle Wood, California State University, Fullerton.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the contents, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by David Mendonça, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Appointed by the National Research Council, he was
responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.