Last July the news broke that the Government was in the process of designing and awarding of a national emergency system with digital alerts. The system would be similar to that deployed by South Korea, which employs a cellular broadcasting system, or the type of the Australian SMS alert system.
The objective of this system would be to notify the population of the main public alerts, a notice that would go directly to our mobile phone although now we have known something more about him. Mainly because said project has already been awarded. It will be handled by the Everbridge company and the commitment is to have the system fully operational by the dawn of summer 2022.
Everbridge Public Alert selected
As we said, the Government was in the process of designing and awarding the system and finally the company Everbridge was chosen. Everbridge is a software company specialized in business solutions and that has tools, such as its Public Alert program, to automate and accelerate operational response during critical events or catastrophes.
“The Everbridge Public Alert Solution enables government organizations and public safety agencies to immediately communicate with everyone in the affected area during a critical event regardless of their nationality, place of residence or type of mobile device” – Vernon Irvin , Everbridge Executive Director of Sales.
The system chosen is Everbridge, the winner of the public competition organized by the Government of Spain last July. The company will therefore be in charge of managing Spain’s National Public Alert System and will use different systems for this. National coverage will be included through Cell Broadcast, alerts will also be published on a web platform and a mobile alert app will also be added developed by the company.
In addition, the Cell Broadcast system will connect directly with the four major mobile operators (Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange and MásMóvil) and these, in turn, will inform their users directly. Although it is not specified exactly how this latest notice will be carried out, everything suggests that it will be mass SMS sending to the subscribers of each operator with filtering by coverage areas.
Everbridge promises an agile, fast alert system that covers 99% of the population
As Moncloa indicates in its statement, “The project is financed with the funds of the Recovery Plan and has been launched thanks to the agreement signed on July 8 between the Ministries of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation and the Ministry of the Interior “. Everbridge wants its disaster alert system to offer coverage and service to 99% of the population.
The alert notices will include both the reasons for the same as well as different measures to be taken and rules to comply with to “act decisively in specific emergencies”. The platform of the awarded company complies with all data privacy regulations, including the GDPR, and will offer agility to emergency services to send alerts as quickly as possible. The system must be active next June 2022.