The government is working on a new civil protection warning system for adverse events such as bad weather or rural fires, the civil protection minister said on Tuesday.
“We want to do more and there is room for growth in terms of the public warning component. Our goal, and we are working on it, is to move from SMS warnings to a cellular broadcasting system,” Patricia Gaspard told Parliament.
The Secretary of State, along with the President of the National Office of Emergency and Civil Protection (ANEPC), Duarte da Costa, were heard in the parliamentary committee on constitutional issues, rights, freedoms and guarantees on Tuesday afternoon in connection with the heavy rains and floods that occurred in the Lisbon area on the night of December 7, 2022 at a hearing on Chega’s request.
Since 2018, the civil defense has been operating a system of preventive notification of the population via SMS (text messages to a mobile phone), which is sent to citizens located in areas where adverse weather occurs.
Patricia Gaspar said the government had begun work on a new public warning system “before this episode” of flooding in the Lisbon area, establishing “the first preliminary contacts with organizations that have the capacity to develop systems of this type.” “.
“We already had the first working meeting with ANEPC, we already had a meeting with the infrastructure, we should involve the National Communications Administration on this issue,” he said, estimating that this new system will be operational “in a year.” or a year and a half.
Cell Broadcast System is a method of sending messages to multiple mobile phone users that can reach a large number of phones at the same time.
The ANEPC President explained to the deputies that the SMS warning system for rural fires, created in 2018, “is not a solution for everything” and has “a latency of five hours.”
“In the episode of December 7, when the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) issued a red notice at 22:26, any message sent to the public will arrive much later than its preventive need, for this we must develop,” – he said.
Duarte Costa emphasized that preventive SMS messages reach the population “two to three hours after ANEPC transmits information to mobile operators.”
With the new system, notifications will be much faster.
The issue of SMS warnings to the population on the night of December 7, which were not sent by ANEPC, was raised by some opposition parties, namely Chega, PSP and Bloco de Esquerda.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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