Why keep alert sirens in France?

Abstract

Abstract. This paper discusses the usefulness of keeping sirens to alert in an emergency situation likely to harm the physical integrity of property or the population in France. Sirens are the main pillars of the National Alert Network (NAN) deployed from 1954 to 2010, and these tools remain the basis of the future Population Alerting and Information System (SAIP) planned for 2022. Sirens are intended to interrupt social activities, and to induce adequate behavior from the authorities and the population potentially endangered. But this ongoing priority raises questions: sirens present technical drawbacks; they have rarely been used (only two times in 60 years); the authorities minimize the potential of connected tools like social media, Cell Broadcast (CBC) Geo-localized Short Message Services, or Smartphone applications. Analyzing the changes observed in our literature review and the lessons learned from two other countries, Belgium and the USA, we conclude that the integration of sirens in a multi-channel platform and the use of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) should sublimate the meaning of siren signals, if the authorities really want to make sirens part of an effective solution to alert people in France.

How fast is fast enough? Twitter usability during emergencies

“…After a series of terror attacks and false alarms, the French national early warning mobile application was discontinued in 2017. After this application was discredited by a series of failures and delays in sending warnings (Douvinet et al, 2020), many have advocated the use of social media for emergency management (SMEM) to disseminate early warnings. The French government subsequently signed agreements with Twitter, Facebook and Google to develop crisis communications 1 .…”