New Mission Need or Requirement

Request

Incorporate Partial County Warnings for NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) and the Emergency Alert System (EAS) into the AWIPS baseline

CaRDS 18-032

4/30/2019

CONTACT INFORMATION

Please feel free to add additional contacts as necessary.

Request Originator

Tim Schott

Timothy.Schott@noaa.gov

301-427-9336

Office: AFS13, Digital and Graphical Information Support Branch (DGISB)

Date: 4/30/2019

Local Office / Management Concurrence (CaRDS Tier 1 Clearance)

Douglas Young

Douglas.Young@noaa.gov

301-427-9312

Office: AFS13

Date:

1 Statement of Mission Need or Requirement1.1 Mission Need or Requirement

Intended Operational Improvements: To geographically-target warnings disseminated by NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) and the Emergency Alert System (EAS). The scope of messages includes NWS Warnings and the Non-Weather Emergency Messages (NWEMs; e.g., Civil Emergency Messages) conveyed via NWR with Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME).

NWR is our nationwide network of 1,031 radio stations broadcasting NWS watches and warnings--24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unlike Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), the NWR network disseminates the full suite of short-fused NWS warnings and the system is maintained and operated directly by NWS. The NWR network reaches 97 percent of the US population and it is highly durable and reliable. We have seen recent, high impact weather events where Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) notifications were interrupted (system’s service capacity was exceeded because of too many users; damaged or destroyed cell phone towers resulted in no service (e.g., California fires); FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) failed because of internet or other connectivity outages; or one or more cell phone carriers did not convey a message) while the NWR network remained fully up-and-running. For example, one NWR transmitter remained operational when Hurricane Maria devastated the communications infrastructure of Puerto Rico in 2017.

The EAS is the official, national public warning system used by state and local authorities. In 1997, the previous Emergency Broadcast System transitioned to today’s EAS. With EAS, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has authorized a specific set of NWS statements, watches and warnings for conveyance to the EAS. For the purpose of this document, we will collectively refer to these statements, watches and warnings as “warnings.” EAS is a tri-agency effort involving the FCC, FEMA and NWS.

Just as NWR is a durable communications network, so too is local radio and television, which can activate EAS. For example, during the tragic Santa Rosa, California fire event in October 2018, in addition to NWR, “relying on power generators, KSRO (AM/FM) was about the only source of public information during the fires,” according to Michael O’Shea, president Amaturo Sonoma Media Group, owner/operators of five market-leading radio stations in Sonoma County. He said, “My community, Santa Rosa, was devastated...when vicious wildfires swept thorugh our city at 2 a.m, literally evaporating 7,000 homes, 100 businesses and killing 43 of our citizens. My AM-FM news/talk station, KSRO, on the air with continuous service for over 80 years, was the only true “first informer. And when the power was off, land lines dead, cable TV off the air, cell service off due to bandwidth starvation and many cell towers melted in the fire, there were only two ways to seek help in the middle of that terrible night: 1) knock on your neighbor’s door and 2) local radio.” (from Radio World NewsBytes, 4/17/2019, “Loving Local Radio”)

NWR messages are transmitted using a digital protocol known as Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME). The NWS policy on SAME is provided in NWSI 10-1712. Each SAME message contains a 6-digit location identifier. SAME is used to activate SAME-capable NWR consumer receivers. In addition, the SAME protocol is identical to the EAS protocol. As a result of this technical requirement, when broadcasters monitor NWR broadcasts for EAS, their equipment will recognize, process and convey messages to EAS. And because broadcasters are required by the FCC to monitor at least two independent sources for EAS, a majority of broadcasters do monitor NWR.

SAME provides the capability for NWR listeners and broadcasters to receive messages only for their choice of selected geographic areas. The problem is that NWS, broadcasters, emergency managers, State and Local EAS Plans, State and Local Emergency Communications Committees, civil alerting authorities, etc. have not leveraged on this technical capability since it was deployed 20 years ago. The exceptions are the limited deployments of partitioning by four WFOs--Duluth, Glasgow, Rapid City, and Tucson. They laid the groundwork for this CaRDS effort and what we believe we be the likely reinvigoration for both NWR and EAS. I am grateful to the WCMs at each of these four offices (and Tanja at Glasgow, who is now the MIC), who have very patiently responded to frequent questions over the past several years. I am also thankful for my work with my WFO colleagues at Las Vegas, where we have learned many details and necessary requirements for the anticipated partitioning of Clark County. I have inquired with Tyra Brown to consider the opportunity for a renewed, national-level public education and outreach campaign to encourage citizens to have battery-operated, SAME-equipped NWR receivers in their homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, places of worship, etc.

While SAME provides the technical capability to receive NWS warnings for specific portions of counties known as partitions (or subdivisions), this dissemination capability was never brought into the AWIPS baseline. That is, the four WFOs employing NWR partitioning have maintained software “on the shelf”--and the software has been “durable” and trustworthy over time, working seamlessly through many years of AWIPS build changes and the transition from the Console Replacement System (CRS) to the Broadcast Message Handler (BMH). Current AWIPS-baselined software conveys all warnings to EAS using full counties.

The geographical area of NWS warnings is defined by the Universal Geographic Code (UGC). The UGC specifies this area by a unique NWS zone (land and/or marine, the “Z” form of UGC) or the state, county or parish (the “C” form of UGC). Since 2007, the geographical area associated with many NWS warnings has been further refined and defined using polygons (defined by latitude and longitude points). However, a much-discussed technical capability to limit NWR and EAS dissemination to areas located within a polygon has not been accomplished and there are no immediate or short-term plans to overhaul this aspect of NWR and EAS dissemination. While the dissemination of NWS warnings by NWR and EAS using county partitions will not perfectly align with warnings defined using polygons, it will fill a longstanding mission gap by substantially reducing the notifications to those geographical areas far-removed from an NWS warning. While dissemination of polygon-defined warnings over NWR and EAS is a worthy and ultimate dissemination goal, the intimate technical connection between NWR and EAS, combined with the likely financial impact to broadcasters in making changes to existing EAS encoder/decoder equipment, are huge roadblocks. Therefore, we view the baselining of NWR SAME county partitioning in the AWIPS baseline as a highly worthy, yet interim step, to deliver more targeted and relevant warnings to the public. For many counties across the nation, the implementation of partitions for NWR and EAS dissemination will be a superior means of dissemination when compared to the whole-county alerting paradigm that has been in place since the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) transitioned to today’s EAS in the mid-1990s.

The impacts of not using the partitioning capability already provided by NWR and EAS specifications are profound. Prominent broadcasters in the national EAS community have complained about “too many warnings” and “NWS warnings for locations far outside of their broadcast service area” and, in some cases, have completely stopped conveying all warnings to EAS. Similar feedback has been received from NWR listeners using SAME-equipped receivers; for example, they are not interested in receiving automated notifications during the overnight hours for warnings affecting areas at the opposite end of a large county. And finally, in many cases the public’s confidence in the EAS has eroded because of too many warnings for areas that may be located hundreds of miles away. According to Adrienne Abbott, the Nevada State EAS Chair and a prominent member of the national broadcasting community, “the implementation of county partitioning will decrease “listener fatigue” and thereby restore listener confidence and attention when receiving NWS warnings via EAS.”

There is a tremendous difference in the geographical area encompassed by counties across the nation. In general, the largest of counties are located in the Western US and Alaska. In fact, many of these counties are larger than some states on the East Coast.

Additionally, the implementation of this service improvement will provide geographically-targeted Non-Weather Emergency Messages (see NWSI 10-518), when broadcast over NWR and conveyed to EAS, for the first time since SAME and EAS was implemented in the mid-1990s. In fact, the capability and need to partition counties for NWEMs was first brought to the NWS via one of our WCMs (Tim Troutman at WFO Riverton) in late 2018.

AFS13 conducted national-level webinars on October 4 and November 5, 2018 to gauge interest by WFOs and NWS Regions in pursuing the CaRDS process for this initiative and there was a firm recommendation for AFS13 to move forward.

1.2 Time Sensitivity

There is a large amount of background information and history connected to this initiative. Therefore, many NWS folks have stated that they “remember hearing something about this in the past.” This is a true observation. AFS13 talked with many people over a period of several years and we discovered important and highly-relevant information that dates back for years.

Please refer to the comprehensive background information on this project in Section 1.4. This initiative builds and expands on the requirements as first introduced in OSIP Project 12-003, NWR Partial County Warnings. While the aforementioned WFOs successfully implemented county partitioning as a local application, the Software Recommendations and Evaluation Committee (SREC) made a decision to allow WFOs to implement partitioning as a local application “as an interim capability...until AWIPS could include the functionality either through AWIPS or an AWIPS modification.” This CaRDS request takes the formal step to include this functionality on AWIPS through a national AWIPS baseline, so all WFOs will be provided with this technical capability.

This request must be directly connected and aligned with a) the evolution of Hazard Services and, therefore, has been shared with key Hazard Services project staff and b) the plans to disseminate as many warnings as possible using polygons (CaRDS project 16-024) and c) NWS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Handler Project, which will replace the aging HazCollect Legacy and HazCollect Extended applications with one system handling all the functions of each. In other words, this project is intertwined--and must be considered within the larger context--with other key initiatives which will radically change how NWS warnings will be formulated and disseminated in the near future. AFS1 has scheduled periodic meetings with CP and DIS staff to emphasize the connectivity of CaRDS 18-032 with the initiatives described in a, b and c.

The previously-identified requirement by the SREC to incorporate partial county alerting via NWR and EAS into the AWIPS baseline, the highly successful use of software by four WFOs for many years, and a significant amount of completed software development and testing should decrease the time between project approval and implementation in the AWIPS national baseline.

1.3 Existing Operational Gaps

NWS warnings are issued by forecasters using county-based Universal Geographic Codes (UGC-C) or zone-based Universal Geographic Codes (UGC-Z) formats. However, the current AWIPS baseline conveys all warnings to NWR SAME on a full-county basis. This means that even if a forecaster-designated polygon only comprises a small subset of a county, the entire county is alerted via NWR SAME. Similarly, if a zone-based warning only comprises a subset of a county, the entire county is also alerted via NWR SAME. Because the SAME protocol is identical to the EAS Protocol, these warnings are conveyed to EAS and are geographically defined as the entire county.

The resulting overwarning by NWR SAME and EAS is problematic in the following scenarios:

· Geographically large counties. There are counties in the western United States that are larger than some states in the eastern United State. For example, San Bernardino County, CA is 20,000 square miles, whereas the following states are smaller than San Bernardino County: CT, DE, HI, MA, NH, NJ, RI and VT. There are ten counties in the CONUS exceeding 10,000 square miles and over 100 counties exceeding 4,000 square miles.

· Oddly-shaped counties, such as Washoe, NV; Douglas, NV; Storey, NV; Nye, NV; Denver, CO.

· Counties with non-contiguous and/or geographically-separated portions such as Monroe, FL; St. Martin, LA; Iberia, LA; Kauai and Maui, HI.

· Counties having discrete population centers, such as Riverside, CA; and/or vast, unpopulated areas, such as Clark, NV.

Examples of oddly-shaped counties:

1 - Iberia Parish, LA (not currently partitioned)

2- Denver County, CO (not currently partitioned)

3) Monroe County, FL (not currently partitioned)

4) In Hawaii, the following two counties are each comprised of two or more island land masses: Kauai and Maui.

The following three counties in AZ (Pinal, Pima and Cochise) are currently partitioned, as documented in the State EAS Plan:

We understand there may be less interest and utility in partial county alerting for those WFOs where County Warning Areas (CWAs) are comprised of small counties. These WFOs can be assured that moving the partitioning capability for NWR and EAS dissemination into the AWIPS baseline will have no impact on these WFOs. And, very importantly, for WFOs where partial county alerting is implemented in the AWIPS baseline for specific counties, the WFO must continue to have the capability to issue full county alerts for these counties.

Currently, WMO warning messages for tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, flash floods, extreme winds and areal floods are issued in UGC-C format and while the warning locations are defined by a polygon, the entire county is alerted for SAME and EAS. In response, WFOs Duluth, Glasgow, Rapid City and Tucson implemented Partial County Warnings on NWR using one of two post-AWIPS algorithms (i.e., software maintained outside of the AWIPS baseline) before calling on the NWR VTEC Enhanced Software (NWRWAVES) and dissemination via NWR.

WMO message from Rapid City. Note that Meade and Pennington Counties are partitioned for NWR and EAS, but no where in the WMO message do we document the county partitioning:

WUUS53 KUNR 182035

SVRUNR

SDC093-103-182115-

/O.NEW.KUNR.SV.W.0281.180718T2035Z-180718T2115Z/

BULLETIN - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED

Severe Thunderstorm Warning

National Weather Service Rapid City SD

235 PM MDT WED JUL 18 2018

The National Weather Service in Rapid City has issued a

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning for...

South central Meade County in west central South Dakota...

Central Pennington County in west central South Dakota...

* Until 315 PM MDT

* At 235 PM MDT, a severe thunderstorm was located near Ellsworth Air

Force Base, or 6 miles northeast of Rapid City, moving southeast at

35 mph.

HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts and quarter size hail.

SOURCE...Radar indicated.

IMPACT...Hail damage to vehicles is expected. Expect wind damage

to roofs, siding, and trees.

* Locations impacted include...

Rapid City, Rapid Valley, Ellsworth Air Force Base, Box Elder,

Black Hawk, Summerset, New Underwood, Caputa, Farmingdale, Rapid

City Airport, Thompson Butte and Railroad Buttes.

This Includes Interstate 90 in South Dakota between Mile Markers 50

and 81.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a

building.

&&

LAT...LON 4417 10336 4423 10324 4426 10312 4424 10296

4392 10252 4385 10284 4386 10302

TIME...MOT...LOC 2035Z 322DEG 30KT 4415 10316

HAIL...1.00IN

WIND...60MPH

$$

Sherburn

Other WFOs have been hesitant to pursue discussions with emergency managers, state and county governments and broadcasters on the benefits of county partitioning because the functionality is not baselined in AWIPS.

1.4 Background Information (Important technical and project history)

There is a long history of meetings associated with this project. When conversations are initiated with folks--at WSH, the Regions, WFOs, the general response is, “I’ve heard something about breaking up counties for emergency alerting over the past several years” or “I’ve heard a couple of WFOs are already doing this now.”

NWR receivers meeting Consumer Technology Association (CTA) 2009-B Public AlertTM receiver specifications must be able to process and convey partitions.

Existing NWS SAME policy for partitions is provided in NWSI 10-1712, Appendix A, Section 2.8.1.

Because broadcasters’ EAS encoder/decoder equipment must meet the specifications for the EAS protocol in 47 CFR Part 11, Section 11.31, then in accordance with state and local EAS plans, broadcasters have the option to program their equipment to convey EAS messages for specific county partitions, in addition to entire counties.

For years, WFOs Duluth, Glasgow, Rapid City and Tucson have successfully used one of two post-AWIPS algorithms before calling on the NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards VTEC Enhanced Software (NWRWAVES). These WFOs report no problems in using the algorithms with the transition from AWIPS to AWIPS2 and the Console Replacement System (CRS) to the Broadcast Message Handler (BMH).

Here are corresponding State EAS Plans documenting county partitioning for each of the four WFOs using county partitions.

The “NWR Partial County Warning Project” was introduced to OSIP in 2012.

Here is the 080612 Integrated Work Team (IWT) Summary and the 090712 IWT Summary.

The OSIP effort was redirected to the Regions after Gate 2 (this was voted upon and approved in September 2012 by Regional Focal Points and NWS HQ Offices during the corresponding OSIP Gate 2 Review

Meeting.)

OPS23 (Peter Wu) provided Test Procedures in 2012.

Peter authored a detailed 2012 report titled “Partial County Warnings on NWR: A study of current implementations by two field offices” (Rapid City and Tucson). In 2017 and in Central Processing (CP), Peter Wu updated the report with additional technical information for WFO Las Vegas and other WFOs and to provide a more flexible algorithm to process partitions defined by irregular shapes.

Matt Bunkers at WFO Rapid City shared the following 2018 briefing for NWRWAVES partitioning.

We acknowledge that the implementation of NWR and EAS partial county alerting must be preceded by extensive WFO vetting and education. This includes the AFS13 recommendation for conducting a Public Comment Period. As one example, since 2014 WFO Las Vegas (Dan Berc) has coordinated with external partners and stakeholders, the Nevada State Emergency Communications Committee (SECC), the NV State EAS Chair, broadcasters, EMs, AFS and DISS on the possible partitioning of Clark County. AFS appreciates the WCM Recommendations and WCM Comments from our existing offices. In turn, AFS13 created a draft socialization, vetting, planning and execution checklist to implement partitioning for Clark County, outside of the AWIPS baseline, for the first phase of that county’s partitioning. AFS13 and DISS have also conducted some early and informal conversations with SRH and, with PRH, for WFO Honolulu. As new lessons are learned, we expect the checklist will be further refined as we move forward.

We understand that despite a comprehensive public education campaign, some citizens with SAME receivers might not receive word about the implementation of county partitions, particularly during the first months of implementation. We greatly appreciate a concern brought to us from Mike Hudson at CRH on whether these citizens might not receive a warning because their receiver was still programmed to the all-county SAME code. We checked with Mr. Bruce Thomas from the Midland Radio Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers of SAME receivers, and he confirmed there will be no service degradation to NWR SAME users who do not reprogram their receivers with the code for their county partition; that is, if the WFO issues a warning for a county partition, it will also alert radios programmed with the “all-county” setting.

We appreciate that there have been previous requirements identified for NWR to incorporate the use of polygons. This was extensively studied by Skjei Telecom under a previous tasking by the Dissemination Systems Branch. Several technical possibilities were identified; however, each was deemed too expensive to study further. A key problem is the inability of broadcasters, using existing EAS encoder/decoder equipment, to relay alert messages containing polygons. Because the SAME protocol used by NWR is identical to the EAS protocol used by broadcasters, any change in the SAME protocol would require an equivalent/concurrent change in the EAS protocol (which would need to be preceded by a change in the FCC Part 11 EAS Rules, and we know, from firsthand experience, that it takes years for the FCC Rules to be changed).

Additionally, any change to the SAME protocol would require a careful assessment on possible service impacts to the millions of NWR receivers currently in use. In 2009, the Consumer Electronics Association (now the Consumer Technology Association) established ANSI/CTA-2009B Receiver Performance Specifications for Public AlertTM receivers. And it took years for this CEA specification to be adopted.

Or more simply stated, the technical requirements for NWR and EAS broadcasts are enmeshed and changing one system requires a change in the other system. Because any overhaul of EAS is many years away and because county partitioning can be executed now to enhance both NWR and EAS services with more targeted message delivery, the incorporation of this dissemination capability into the AWIPS baseline is long overdue.

The following needs to be explicitly stated, because failure to do otherwise could lead to future communications confusion in characterizing the end state after this operational change is implemented in AWIPS. While this project will result in a more targeted means of disseminating NWS warnings, where current warnings are geographically defined using polygons, this project does not result in a direct, one-to-one dissemination of an NWS polygon to NWR SAME and EAS. However, this improved method for NWR SAME and EAS dissemination results in a much better dissemination footprint which more closely aligns with the area defined using the NWS warning polygon.

1.5 Requirements identified thus far include, but are not limited to:

· A partial county map will be displayed in the WarnGen (or HazSimp) software as a new background map so forecasters can clearly see the relationship between the county partitions as they draw polygons. Forecasters will have an option to select the partitioning algorithm most appropriate for the configuration of a given county. That is, within a given CWA and depending on the shapes of hte counties and the partitions, it is possible for one WFO to invoke more than one partitioning algorithm.

· For zone-based warnings, establish the ability within AWIPS to align NWS zones with NWR county partitions.

OPTIONAL: The bullets above can/should be simplified to: "For all polygon-based warnings disseminated via NWR SAME, establish the ability in AWIPS to identify the targeted area for NWR dissemination via county partitions. This service improvement is linked to CaRDS 16-024, Polygon Data for All NWS Alerts.

The operational implementation of NWR and EAS partitions must be vetted and approved by emergency management agencies and EAS stakeholders; preceded by a comprehensive public education and awareness campaign; and incorporated into State and Local EAS Plans.

· Ensure the application(s) will still allow for alerting the entire county as a default.

· Establish an AWIPS national shape file database for NWR county partitions. The national shape file database is a prerequisite for populating Common Alerting Protocol version 1.2 (CAP v1.2) messages to reflect county partitions within that attribute.

· Ensure the application(s) are fully integrated with the (current and future) NWS system that creates and disseminates NWS CAP messages. To ensure consistent messaging of NWS warnings, provide a “transport mechanism” from GIS-mapping software so the partitions are appropriately denoted in a) WMO messages and b) Common Alerting Protocol version 1.2 (CAP v1.2) messages. Note that the current HazCollect Extended (HCE) system sends NWS CAP messages to FEMA’s IPAWS. Active requirements planning is now underway for the functional requirements in the existing HCE system to be integrated and superseded by a single “CAP Handler” system in the future. The CAP Handler system must be able to process and document NWR-partitioned counties in CAP v1.2 messages. In addition and very importantly:Comment by Timothy Schott - NOAA Federal: Several meetings have been conducted, and agreement has been reached, to ensure the CAP requirements for CaRDS 18-032 are aligned and integrated with the requirements, planning and execution of the "CAP Handler Project".

· The NWS has been working for several years to address a longstanding technical issue known as “duplicate EAS messages,” whereby broadcasters’ EAS encoder/decoder equipment may be at risk for a technical inability to disambiguate an NWS-generated CAP v1.2 message from an NWS-generated SAME (EAS legacy) message and, because the FCC requires broadcasters to monitor two or more independent sources for EAS messages, may result in two EAS activations for the same warning. As a result of this technical risk and at the request of NWS to FEMA, NWR warnings are blocked from dissemination via FEMA’s IPAWS CAP v1.2 feed on the IPAWS EAS Channel. The inclusion of partitions in NWS CAP v1.2 message may help to reduce the risk of duplicate EAS messages.

· Explicitly document NWR county partitions in WMO messages. The earliest discussions on partial county alerting (i.e., in a period prior to the 2012-2013 SREC discussions and also, per documentation, from the late 1990s) proposed amending the format of the Universal Geographic Code (UGC)-C county codes (currently each county is denoted by three digits) by adding additional nomenclature (e.g., additional digits.) This option was, and continues to be, deemed a very heavy lift and also have major impacts on the processing and downstream dissemination of NWS messages by the weather enterprise. At this time, the addition of some type of “tag,” placed below the double ampersand ($$) symbol, to denote the use of partial county alerting, is a requirement for WMO messages. The documentation of partial county alerting in WMO messages will ensure for consistent NWS messaging across multiple platforms. The addition of a tag below the $$ would be similar to the recent addition of impact tags below the $$.

· Currently, WFOs are not able to provide direct, backup operations for NWR broadcasts disseminated from another WFO’s transmitter. This is a serious service vulnerability. However and in the future, when WFOs gain the capability to provide NWR backup operations, a new requirement must be to ensure they can invoke partitioning for NWR broadcasts for offices they back up.

· Currently and because there are sometimes overlaps in the broadcast footprints of two NWR transmitters, where each transmitter is operated by a different WFO for a given county, the warnings for a county are disseminated over each of the two transmitters. Therefore, even though “WFOs are not able to provide direct, backup operations for NWR broadcasts,” if County 1, located in the CWA for WFO1 is partitioned and the warnings for the County 1 are disseminated by NWR Transmitter 1, owned and operated by WFO1, and by NWR Transmitter 2, owned and operated by WFO2, then if the operations of WFO1 need to be backed up, then the partitioning algorithm for County 1 could be invoked by WFO2 as a means for the partitioned county to be disseminated via SAME and EAS from Transmitter 2. Clearly, unique considerations would be required for incorporation into future coding algorithms to allow adjacent WFOs to invoke NWR SAME and EAS partitioning for a county residing in the CWA for another office.

· Ensure the national NWR page accurately details the SAME, six digit location codes for every county using partitions. Similarly, ensure the identical documentation is provided to the public when they dial in to the NWS’s toll free number providing the SAME, six digit location codes.

· Concerning Non-Weather Emergency Messages (NWEMs). NWEMs are county-based messages. Examples of NWEMs (see NWSI 10-518) include the Civil Emergency Message (CEM) and the Fire Warning (FRW). Depending on State and Local EAS Plans and knowledge about the capabilities afforded by partial county alerting, county governments and emergency management agencies may have an interest in disseminating their NWEMs using partial county alerting, to reduce over-alerting county residents with these messages via EAS. In fact, some alerting authorities have consciously decided to not issue NWEMs because of the risks in overalerting the public.

NWS offices use one of two methods for disseminating NWEMs over NWR.

Method 1: NWEMs are generated by forecasters in AWIPS on behalf of alerting officials-- where officials provide the message to offices via phone, email, etc. Currently, NWEMs are generated by forecasters using using the AWIPS Graphical Hazards Generatore (GHG). The WMO messages are created for whole-county and do not includ polygons. The reader should be aware that the separate CaRDS project, 16-024, Polygon Data for all NWS Alerts, includes the NWEMs created by forecasters.

New Requirement for CaRDS project 18-032: When forecasters create NWEMs:

-- If local authorities use partial county alerting for NWEMs, WFOs require the capability to convey these alerts via NWR and EAS using partial county alerting. WFOs will execute an appropriate partitioning algorithm.

--- If local authorities use partial county alerting for NWEMs and the alerts are defined using polygons, WFOs require the capability to convey these alerts via NWR and EAS using partial county alerting. WFOs will execute an appropriate partitioning algorithm.

-- Ensure the creation and dissemination of NWEMs will continue to allow forecasters to alert for the entire county.

Input from WFO Riverton: Local, county, state and federal fire and emergency partners are requesting specifically that the EVI and FRW products be transitioned immediately to polygon-based products, to limit SAME and EAS dissemination to targeted portions of a county. This capability would allow the incident commander at the wildfire the ability to provide the EMA coordinator/IDSS meteorologist with the appropriate lat/lon points of the areas that will need to be warned during a wildfire. The current GHG configuration only allows for warning the entire county.

Method 2: Some alerting authorities have the capability to send CAP alerts directly to FEMA’s Integrated Public and Alert Warning System (IPAWS). Currently and via the HazCollect Legacy (HCL) system, these messages are received from FEMA IPAWS and routed to the AWIPS workstation and on to NWR. However, HCL does not currently have the capability to convey polygons and/or identify NWR partitions at this time.

Future requirement: The functional requirements for HCL will be superseded and integrated into the “CAP Handler” system in the future. The new system must be able to process and forward NWR-partitioned counties for Non-Weather Messages sent from FEMA IPAWS to NWS.

2 Justification and Benefits to the NWS2.1 Strategic Drivers and Mandates

If available, link the request to a specific initiative, mandate, law, stakeholder need or other justification.

Table 2.1: Justification

Does the requirement address a mandate by NOAA, DOC, OMB, Executive Order, or Law?

Yes

Is the requirement needed to satisfy a specific external organization’s needs?

Yes

Does the requirement address a specific DOC, NOAA, or NWS strategic initiative?

Yes

Explanation of justification:

This requirement provides a capability that advances NWS goals under the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 to improve warnings to protect life and property. Section 406 states that NOAA must conduct an evaluation of its system for issuing watches and warnings and the requirement is a response to feedback received for many years from Emergency Alert System (EAS) stakeholders and the national broadcaster community.

The requirement aligns with DOC Strategic Objective 3.3, Reduce Extreme Weather Impacts, for NWS to deliver “clearer communication of high-impact water and weather events” and to “work with public safety partners to ensure they are better able to utilize our forecasts in their emergency management and response plans.”

The requirement aligns with NWS Draft Strategic Plan Goal 1, “to reduce the impacts of weather/water/climate events by transforming the way people receive, understand, and act on information” and Goal 1.13 to “leverage enterprise capabilities to extend the reach and amplify NWS warnings to improve individual decision making.”

[Provide explanations to “yes” answers above. If the requirement addresses a strategic initiative, indicate which one and where (i.e., the NWS Phasing Diagram, NWS Planning Guidance Memo, NWS Weather-Ready Nation Roadmap 2.0, NWS Weather-Ready Nation Implementation Plan, or other (please specify). Be specific with any stated justification, ensuring strong linkage where applicable ]

2.2 Benefits

Identify how satisfying the request will benefit the NWS, partners, the public, or other stakeholders.

Table 2.2: Benefit to the NWS

Describe how the request will benefit NWS’ mission to protect life and property.

Describe how the request will help the NWS better serve our partners and the public.

Describe how the request will improve how NWS operates.

Describe how the request will help NWS be a better steward of government resources (e.g., time or money).

Explanation of benefits to NWS:

It is voluntary for broadcasters to convey weather warnings to EAS. Because of the NWS failure to implement partial county alerting and complaints from the public to broadcasters about the notification of warnings for locations 100 or more miles away, some broadcasters have chosen to not convey any warnings to EAS. This is an extreme service degradation to the public. At the same time, these broadcasters have also expressed an interest in NWS county partitioning. Moving this capability into AWIPS will result in higher confidence by WFOs in implementing county partitioning and garner good will and cooperation from broadcasters.

Partial county warnings will increase the credibility of NWS warnings and therefore result in a faster and more improved public response to warnings and ultimately save lives.

Partial county warnings will substantially reduce the “false alarm area” in large or oddly-shaped counties. NWS will be providing a more effective warning by reducing the area and number of people unnecessarily warned via NWR, EAS and weather enterprise/service providers utilizing CAP v1.2 messages for downstream message dissemination. Examples of vendors providing downstream message dissemination for public alerting include Comlabs’ EMNet, Everbridge and Reverse 911.

Implementation will provide better agreement with dissemination systems now using warning polygons (e.g., WEA)

Partial county buy-in from broadcasters will be facilitated because their encoder/decoder equipment can already process partial county codes: there is no additional cost incurred by the broadcasters. Only an easy reprogram of equipment is required.

The BMH configuration for accommodating partial county alerting is already in place to process a leading, non-zero value in the six digit location code when received via NWRWAVES.

3 National Service Program

Identify the most appropriate Analyze, Forecast and Support Office National Service Program to vet and address this request.

AFS13’s Digital and Graphical Information Support (DGIS) Mission Support Team (MST) is the lead and owner. However, this is a cross-cutting initiative and will benefit warning dissemination for the Fire Weather, Marine, Severe Weather, Tropical, Winter Weather, Water Resources, Public and Tsunami programs.

Table 3.1: Identification of lead National Service Program

Program Name

X

Program Name

X

Program Name

X

Aviation

Tropical

Public

Fire Weather

Winter Weather

Space Weather

Marine

Climate

Tsunami

Severe Weather

Water Resources

Overarching (broad cross-cutting across the Service Programs for WFO-issued warnings)

X

4 Estimated Resource Needs (future required actions)

The longstanding algorithms already in use by WFOs Duluth, Glasgow, Rapid City and Tucson and the recent development work completed by Peter Wu (CP) will serve as a strong foundation and excellent starting point for additional software development to meet the requirements identified thus far.

Need for Training: Forecasters will need to be educated on the benefits of partial county alerting for SAME and EAS; required vetting and discussion with all EAS stakeholders, emergency managers, broadcasters, government officials; the need for a public comment and education period; how to invoke partitions in AWIPS, etc.

Action: Tim Schott to reach out to Mike Magsig at the NWS Training Center. Assistance will be needed from Ashley Kells (CP).

DIS, and specifically the Dissemination Services Team (DST), will need to participate in early partitioning plans and assist WFOs by examining the broadcast footprints from NWR transmitters.

Action: Tim Schott to reach out to DST staff (Hodan, de Waters, Hart, Nathan) on required changes to NWR transmitter Listening Area Codes (LACs) when county partitions are implemented.

Need for Testing: Algorithms for partitioning weather and NWEMs will need to be verified and tested by the NWS in the NWR Lab.

Need to involve the FEMA IPAWS Office: It will be necessary for NWS to keep staff in the FEMA IPAWS office aware of active NWS plans to partition counties for NWR and EAS services. Since FEMA establishes the requirements for IPAWS-approved alerting software, FEMA will need to conduct a delicate dialogue with software vendors concerning the partitioning of counties. (As of now, NWS is unaware of any IPAWS-approved alerting software which allows alerting authorities to invoke county partitioning for NWEMs.) NWS algorithms for partitioning weather and NWEMs will need to be verified and tested at FEMA’s IPAWS Testing Lab. Similarly, vendor software for NWEMs will also need to be tested at FEMA’s IPAWS Testing lab. The FEMA Lab contains actual vendor hardware (different manufacturers and models) for the EAS encoder/decoder equipment used by broadcasters.

Broadcasters, emergency managers, alerting authorities, and State and Local Emergency Communications Committees will need to be informed and educated on the benefits of using partial county alerting.

WFOs need to remain alert if they hear about possible, future changes on the boundaries associated with any of their partitioned counties. This includes counties that add increase in size (annexation) or decrease in size; counties that change names (since this requires a FIPS code change); counties that change to independent cities and independent cities that change to counties (both scenarios require a change in FIPS codes). A resource from the Census Bureau documenting substantial changes to counties and county equivalents is provided on line at:http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/county-changes.html

V2.0