Integrated Public Alert and Warning System

[1] In June 2006, following criticism over the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13407[2] ordering the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a new program to integrate and modernize the nation's existing population warning systems.

[4] The system allows for alerts to be originated by Federal, State, local and tribal officials, and subsequently disseminated to the public using a range of national and local alerting systems including EAS, CMAS and NWR.

[5] The system uses open standard digital formats such as the EDXL-based Common Alerting Protocol v1.2 for its messages, allowing for interoperable dissemination to a wide range of third party receivers.

[8] Under this agreement, the industry was given a 28-month period to develop, test and deploy a system to allow CMAS alerts to be disseminated to mobile devices.

Specifically, the system will allow 90-character SMS to be pushed to all cellphones and pagers in a geographical area, warning of imminent dangers to life or property.