 What is AEN?
Published May 30, 2007
The AEN Idea Comes from Experience
America’s Emergency Network (AEN) is a two-part system designed to fill critical gaps in the nation’s emergency communications system. AEN was designed by CBS News Hurricane Analyst, Bryan Norcross, and former National Hurricane Center director, Max Mayfield, with knowledge gained from decades on the front lines of dealing with large-scale disasters. Communications breakdowns – whether on a regional level like after Katrina or a local level like after Wilma – have plagued every government recovery effort in memory.
AEN will be the conduit that emergency managers and other government officials responsible for disaster response and recovery will use to get their messages to the media and/or directly to the public via the internet and, eventually, a dedicated television channel. AEN will work because it has been designed to eliminate the breakdowns that have interrupted communications in the past.
Why Do We Need It?
Since 9/11, the topic of “emergency communications” has been a hot-button topic in Washington. Indeed, there were numerous communications failures during that event. Again, after hurricane Katrina, post-event reports noted the same gaps in the communications systems that post-Andrew reports pointed to as a hazard to public safety 13 years earlier.
During a crisis, government officials in the U.S. rely on the same news and information system that serves us every day, even though neither the technical infrastructure nor the operational systems are designed to operate under the strain of a disaster situation. The emergency requirements that communications be immediate, clear, and cover all important issues and affected geographic areas (i.e., more than a short soundbite) cannot be fulfilled by the traditional news-gathering framework.
Currently there is no standardized, dedicated, and secure distribution infrastructure for disseminating critical information and instructions issued by local, state, and federal emergency management agencies that overcomes the delays and incomplete-distribution limitations of the everyday news-coverage system.
You’d Think It Already Exists
Governmental entities, and notably cities and small counties, are acutely aware of the need to have live, direct access to their constituents during emergencies. As surprising as it may seem, in the United States there is no organized, secure system in place where emergency information issued by government agencies other than the National Weather Service is stored and accessible by the public, the media, and other interested parties.
Since the formation of the federal Department of Homeland Security – and the related security focus at all levels of government – the information vacuum as become more evident and acute. Literally thousands of cities and other government entities now have an emergency operations plan and often an emergency operations center. No communications system has been designed or planned, however, to disseminate the information that these centers produce.
Part of the Big Picture
AEN is a secure, robust network to collect emergency bulletins and video feeds, store the information in a central database, and distribute it via the internet and television. There is more to emergency communications than distributing the information, however. People have to know to go online or tune in.
To be sure that people anywhere can get the message, AEN has teamed up with AlertFM, a product of Global Security Systems. AlertFM is deploying a national instantaneous alerting system that will not be dependent on phone lines or cellphone towers. The combined AEN/AlertFM network will once and for all bridge the information gap that occurs after every disaster.
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