National Best Practice Guidelines for the Request and Broadcast of Emergency Warnings
The National Best Practice Guidelines for the Request and Broadcast of Emergency Warnings were endorsed by the then Ministerial Council for Police and Emergency Management – Emergency Management (MCPEM-EM) in 2007. They were also endorsed by the peak broadcast media bodies representing all sectors of the industry.
The Guidelines provide a simple, consistent and clearly defined process across all emergency services and broadcast media for issuing, verifying, updating and terminating broadcast requests. The Guidelines have been used as a primary source document when developing new or revised memorandums of understanding or arrangements relating to broadcast warnings.
All States and Territories have processes and formal agreements with the public broadcaster, and commercial broadcast media, and, many have progressed formal arrangements with pay and community broadcast media.
National Best Practice Guidelines for the Request and Broadcast of Emergency Warnings.PDF
Australia’s Emergency Warnings Arrangements
The Attorney-General's Department document entitled Australia’s Emergency Warnings Arrangements outlines the policies, principles, collective responsibilities, and warning methods that underpin emergency warnings sent from government authorities to Australian communities.
Australias Emergency Warning Arrangements.pdf
Emergency warning principles
In October 2008, the Ministerial Council for Police and Emergency Management - Emergency Management (MCPEM-EM) endorsed the following 12 national emergency warning system principles. The principles provide a framework that guides activities in the public warning sphere. Adhering to these principles also improves the effectiveness of emergency warnings and communications across all jurisdictions:
- Coordinated: a warning system should avoid duplication of effort where possible and support a shared understanding of the situation among different agencies involved in managing the incident.
- Authoritative and accountable: warnings are to be disseminated on the decision of an authorised person. Authorities should be able to interrogate the System components for later analysis.
- Consistent / Standards based: the information content is coordinated across all of the mechanisms used for warnings. Messages must be consistent across different sources if they are to be believed by the general population. Conflicting messages tend to create uncertainty and will delay responsive action. Any relevant identified standards will underpin the agreed System Framework.
- Complete: message content should include relevant pertinent details, including possibly a direction on the need to consult other sources, presented in a way that is easily and quickly understood by the population. This includes multiple languages in some cases, as well as the use of multi-media for those who are illiterate or people with a disability (eg. people who are Deaf or have a hearing impairment or those who are blind or have a vision impairment).
- Multi-modal: warnings are to be disseminated using a variety of delivery mechanisms and in multiple information presentation formats that will, in some circumstances, complement each other to produce a complete picture, with planning and processes to allow for maximum reach to all members of the community and to provide for redundancies in the case of critical infrastructure failure (eg. power or telecommunications).
- All-hazards: any emergency warning system developed will be capable of providing warnings, where practicable, for any type of emergency.
- Targeted: messages should be targeted to those communities at risk in order to reduce the complacency that can result from people receiving warnings that do not apply to them – 'over warning'.
- Interoperable: have coordinated delivery methods, capable of operation across jurisdictional borders for issuing warnings.
- Accessible and responsive: capable of responding to and delivering warnings in an environment of demographic, social and technological change. Recognise the criticality of adopting universal design and access principles, particularly in the development and acquisition of technologies.
- Verifiable: the community is able to verify and authenticate the warnings to reduce incidents of accidental activations and prevent malicious attempts to issue false alerts to a population.
- Underpinned by education and awareness raising activities: the System, any delivery mechanisms that constitute it and the language used in the warning messages it delivers, should be underpinned by appropriate education and awareness raising activities.
- Compatible: with the existing telecommunications networks and infrastructure without adversely impacting on the normal telephone and broadcast system. The System should avoid any adverse operational, technical or commercial implications for the provision of current communications services to consumers and on the integrity of communications networks.
To underpin the implementation of the national telephone-based emergency warning capability, in 2009, States and Territories added a further two principles:
- Compliant with relevant legislation: warnings should be compliant with relevant Commonwealth, State and Territory legislation, associated regulations and policy.
- Integrated: warnings should be integrated to ensure timely notification to multiple organisational stakeholders and communication channels.
A number of States and Territories have developed their own protocols that reference these guidelines.