It-alert, off to the regional tests of the Civil Protection alarm system

It-alert, the text-message public warning system that alerts citizens “in the event of major emergencies or impending or ongoing disasters” is ready for a large-scale test. Not yet at a national level, as happened in England on April 23, but at a regional level. This was announced by the Minister for Civil Protection Nello Musumeci and the head of the Civil protection, Fabrizio Curcio at the press conference during which they provided some details on the types of emergencies that will be the subject of the alarm and on the system which, they have specified several times, is not yet operational.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm__g7Jz09Y

Not officially, at least, given that the deputy head of the Department, Titti Postiglione, he told Green and Blue more than a year ago that “in theory, if the day after tomorrow we were to raise a public alarm about an accident at a nuclear power plant near our borders, we could do it”. We will try to accelerate now, five years after the announcement of the then head of the Department, Angelo Borrelli, to make it “fully executive at the beginning of next year” said the minister.

The emergency list

There are six cases in which It-alert can be activated, specified in the directive issued by the same minister on February 7: tsunami generated by an earthquake; collapse of a large dam; volcanic activity, relating to the Vesuvius, Campi Flegrei, Vulcano and Stromboli volcanoes; nuclear accidents or radiological emergency situations; major accidents in establishments subject to legislative decree 26 June 2015, n. 105 (which deal with dangerous substances ed); heavy rainfall. There are no earthquakes, obviously, because, as Curcio underlined, they are not predictable. Nor fires.

And it is on the predictability of some events, or their occurrence, that everything is played out. The directive refers several times to probabilistic, numerical and monitoring models: “We say that the forwarding of the message and its reception is not salvific, that is, it does not guarantee safety, but puts the citizen in a position to know that we have foreseen an event , a serious emergency which can be of a water, hydrogeological or seismic nature (the earthquake is called into question only in correlation to a tsunami ed) – added Musumeci – can be a fire with effects and repercussions that can involve even an urban settlement (but fires are not mentioned in the directive ed), even nuclear power. From that moment on, the citizen must adopt a conduct of greater awareness. When the alarm sounded in wartime, the citizen knew he had to run to the shelter”.

Here is another variable, that of the effective impact of an event and the management of the alarm: “While we can measure the event with the margin of uncertainty of technology – remarked Curcio – the impact on the territory does not we can control it because a very intense rain can flood an underpass where a person may or may not be in danger While the danger is objective, it is the threshold, the risk depends on a whole series of factors that cannot be determined centrally But be careful, today the system in this phase is centralized, after which the system will be available to the structures, therefore to the regions, to the mayors”.

The cell broadcast system

It’s a text message that reaches everyone, but not a text message. It starts from the Civil Protection and is distributed through the antennas of the four main mobile telephone operators to reach any device hooked up to the cells of the selected geographical area, affected by the emergency, which can be very limited or large. Therefore, it will also be received by users who have a contract with a non-physical operator, because it still relies on the antennas of one of the four operators that own the infrastructure.

If there is no signal or the phone is turned off, the message does not arrive, however it remains the most widespread method to reach the majority of people. It will be activated by the procedure, rather than the decision and responsibility of a single operator, Curcio specified, and in the case of heavy rains “we are working on an algorithm, so there will be no one pressing the button. When the algorithm recognizes that those events will have occurred, it will automatically start working. It’s a test, we have to work on it”.

Testing in all regions in 2023

It-alert has already been tested on smaller areas. For example a Volcano, in April 2022 and in the Strait of Messina in November which affected half a million people, the result, according to the minister, was “satisfactory, not exciting”. 20,000 replies were collected from those who received the alarm and answered the questions. First it will be up to the citizens of Tuscany. The June 28 all cell phones connected to cells in that region will be sent this text, in Italian and English: “This is a test message from the Italian public alarm system. Once operational, it will notify you in the event of a serious emergency. For information go to the website www.it-alert.it and fill out the questionnaire”.

All those who receive it are invited to fill in a form and give their opinion: “The more questionnaires we have, in these tests, and this is why we will do so many for each region, the more we will have the possibility to improve the system, which it obviously needs to be improved”. On 30 June it will be the turn of Sardinia, then on 5 July Sicily, 7 July Calabria and 10 July Emilia-Romagna. By the end of the year, exercises are expected to have taken place in all regions, including the two autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano.