The warning and alerting of the general population represents one of the most important tasks of public authorities in the framework of the Austrian National Crisis and Disaster Management (ger. SKKM – Staatliches Krisen- und Katastrophenschutzmanagement). Until a few years ago, the warning and alerting of the Austrian population had been following a dual-channel approach in which the warnings and alerts were issued either via the subsidiary, nation-wide system of sirens and/or via the Austrian radio and television channels. While over the last decades this approach has proved to be effective, the technological evolution of the recent years has put forward novel requirements towards the domain of public warning and alerting: The fact that younger generations hardly make use of live radio and television programs but rather consume their media content asynchronously via the Internet may serve as a fitting example in this context, underlining the need of pursuing novel approaches, i.e., employing additional channels in order to reach all citizens in the case of crises or disasters. In this sense, the project KIRAS PASA, which was initiated by the BMI and all nine Austrian federal states in 2016, has proposed a novel, modular ICT architecture for the warning and alerting of the Austrian population based on the Common Alerting Protocol Austria (CAP-AT) as an Austrian flavor of the open CAP standard. The PASA architecture has enabled the inclusion of novel, modern channels and systems into the Austrian public warning and alerting architecture, e.g., KATWARN which was introduced as a live service by the BMI in July 2017. Building upon the results of the successful predecessor project KIRAS PASA, the BMVIT, the BMI, the BMLV the Federal State of Styria, the DCNA (Disaster Competence Network Austria), and – as associated partners – the major Austrian broadcasting and media companies ORF (public broadcasting) and Austrian Press Agency (APA), the Austrian mobile network operators A1, T-Mobile Austria and “3” will employ KIRAS RELIANCE for the completion of the current system landscape by introducing additional – particularly resilient – public warning channels. In this sense, the BMVIT in early 2019 took the initiative to introduce Cell Broadcast to Austria in order to enhance the reach of the public warning and alerting information to all users of mobile phones throughout Austria, including the roaming foreign citizens. In parallel, the use of the European Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for the proliferation of public warning and alerting messages directly to the mobile phones of the citizens has recently arisen, and KIRAS RELIANCE will enable its introduction into the Austrian landscape of public warning channels. Furthermore, KIRAS RELIANCE will fulfill the request of its stakeholders and partners towards enabling the communication of public warning and alerting information to the Austrian broadcasting companies and to the channels available in public spaces in a manner that is free of media discontinuities. Overall, KIRAS RELIANCE will set a cornerstone for one of the world’s most resilient, modular, and holistic public warning and alerting systems, thereby greatly improving the safety of Austrian citizens over the coming years and decades.
The project RELIANCE is funded by the Austrian security research programme KIRAS of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism (BMLRT).