Q&A with Chris Bennett from America’s Emergency Network
Find out about AEN, the first comprehensive emergency communication system in the U.S., from CTO Chris Bennett.
If you wanted to know the weather in any city in the United States, you could go to The Weather Channel or weather.gov. But if you wanted to know about emergencies in those cities, where would you go? Surprisingly enough, there is no organized, secure system in place where emergency information issued by U.S. government agencies (other than the National Weather Service) is stored and accessible by the public.
America’s Emergency Network [1] (AEN) is trying to fill the gap by becoming the conduit that U.S. government officials will use to get their messages to the public via the Internet, TV and mobile devices. Like The WildLab [2], which I wrote about last week, AEN recently received recognition and licensing opportunities after placing in the semifinals of the Navteq Global LBS Challenge [3]. I spoke with Chris Bennett [4], who manages AEN's technology initiatives, to find out more about the project.
Can you describe how the mobile phones will be employed for AEN?
If there's an emergency in your town - something localized like a tanker truck accident or something widespread like a hurricane - your officials can instantly send a live video news conference or text bulletin to your community and local TV stations via AEN.
When an official posts an emergency bulletin, this information is sent to the AEN Central Database, where at that point it's just a matter of distribution to get the message out. Our messages are encoded in a format called CAP, or Common Alerting Protocol, which looks a lot like an XML feed. CAP includes fields such as Severity, Recommended Response, Effective Time, and other meta data that makes sense to represent in an emergency communication.
Multiple devices, mainly our website and mobile phones, can then look at the CAP messages as they are sent out and format them for display to the user. The real beauty with mobile "location aware" devices is that we now know two things: one, where the location of the emergency is; and two, where the person holding the phone is. With this information, we're able to alert users of emergencies literally happening in their immediate area. This is a huge improvement over traditional systems that rely on you to enter a home zip code - which isn't all that helpful as soon as you begin to travel.
Is there a personal story behind your interest in dissemination of emergency alerts?
My interest in emergency alerts goes back to 2005 when I moved from Philadelphia to Florida with my greatest supporter and girlfriend Janet in the year of Hurricane Katrina (and many others). Having no idea how to prepare for a hurricane - I'm used to shoveling snow - I looked online and found little to no resources. That was the moment where co-founder Peter Loui and I founded OneStorm Hurricane Preparedness [5], a free website to help families create disaster plans. Through my work with OneStorm, I met CBS News' Bryan Norcross and former National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield who were just forming AEN. As of this month, I am now the CTO of AEN and launching a brand new version of OneStorm on June 1st.
What are the future plans for the AEN project?
There are three things that everyone wants to know (whether they know it or not) and two ways to get it on a mobile device. You want to know when there's an emergency (1) near your location at that moment, (2) near your home and (3) near family or loved ones. Our plans are to identify developers, device manufacturers and carriers that are ready to work with AEN's database of emergency messages to quickly answer those questions for you.
I see there being essentially two ways that AEN will integrate with your mobile device. First, the device always needs to listen for critical alerts near you in concert with location technologies in your phone. We see a future where device manufactures and carriers only want to sell phones that can receive emergency alerts - and where consumers wouldn't buy a phone without that feature. Second, there is a market for more advanced applications where AEN may sell software that incorporates real time traffic, weather and other tools that help persons navigate emergency situations.
With what devices does the AEN application currently work?
The application was optimized for the Nokia N95 but will run on any device that operates on the WHERE [6] platform. It's our intention to develop for devices that incorporate devices' FM chips with RDS (Radio Data System) to receive messages even when cell networks are overwhelmed. With our partner AlertFM [7], we'll make sure that you can receive an emergency alert even if you can't get a call or an SMS through. It's pretty amazing technology to keep on the lookout for.
Is there anything else you'd like to talk about regarding the project or your work in mobile development?
What I love most about mobile development is that it's something new and fresh to get excited about. I think many of us have reached a point where web development can get a little stale (even after all the Web 2.0 hype). Just look at how eager people are to dive into the iPhone SDK or tap into the GPS power of the N95. It's fostering a whole new level of creativity that was long overdue. I foresee significant investment in this space and much innovation ahead. If I can be a part of that with AEN while making a big impact to those impacted by disasters – what could be better?
[1] http://www.emergency.info
[2] http://workshop.nseries.com/2008/06/03/apps-services-qa-with-the-wildlab-creators/447
[3] http://developer.navteq.com/site/global/lbs_challenge/americas/2008finalists/p_2008finalists.jsp
[4] http://MeetChrisBennett.com
[5] http://www.onestorm.org
[6] http://where.com
[7] http://www.alertfm.com
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