Civil Defense Siren - Sirens in Integrated Public Warning Systems

Sirens in Integrated Public Warning Systems

Sirens are sometimes used as part of an integrated warning system that links sirens with other warning media such as the radio and TV Emergency Alert System, NOAA Weather Radio, telephone alerting systems, Reverse 911, Cable Override and wireless alerting systems in the United States and the Emergency Public Warning System in the Canadian province of Alberta. This integrated approach enhances the credibility of warnings and reduces the risk of their being dismissed as false alarms by corroborating the warning messages through multiple media. The Common Alerting Protocol is a technical standard for this sort of multi-system integration.

Siren installations themselves have many ways of being activated. Commonly used are DTMF broadcasts over phone lines (direct connection or standard PSTN) or over radio broadcast. This does leave room for exploitation, but there are protections from false alarms. These sirens can also be tied into other networks such as a fire departments volunteer notification/paging system. The basics of this type of installation would be a device (possibly the same pager the firefighters have) connected to the controller/timer system of the siren. When a page is received, the siren is activated.

Read more about this topic:  Civil Defense Siren

Famous quotes containing the words integrated, public, warning and/or systems:

    Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.
    Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)

    The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farm should be made familiar to every boy, and suitable industrial education should be furnished for every girl.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
    your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
    that the Count will die, that you will accept
    your America back to live like a prim thing
    on the farm in Maine.
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)

    What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)