Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Ember Alerts: Assessing Wireless Emergency Alert (Wea) Messages In Wildfires Using The Warning Response Model, Erica D. Kuligowski, Nicholas A. Waugh, Jeannette Sutton, Thomas J. Cova

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

When evacuation is necessary in a wildfire event, affected communities must be alerted and warned of the imminent danger and instructed on what to do to protect themselves. One channel available to message providers in the United States is Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) disseminated via IPAWS. Recent wildfire events have shed light on the need to improve WEA strategies and messages when alerting exposed populations of imminent fire threat. The purpose of this article is to assess how, when and where WEAs have been used in US wildfires; whether they comply with guidance set out by Mileti and Sorensen’s Warning …