Germany to implement network alerts against natural disasters

Berlin (dpa) – Germany is moving closer to introducing a public warning system that can transmit an alert directly to people’s phones, seven months after sudden floods devastated some western areas of the country.

The Federal Network Agency produced a guideline on Wednesday on the regulation of the technical details. In future, this will enable mobile networks to be used to alert the population in the case of natural disasters or other catastrophes.

The system, known as a “cell broadcast,” allows the government to send an alert to every mobile phone in a given radius. The alert is not limited to smartphones, and can be received by any basic cellphone.

The guideline suggests the use of cell broadcasts as an “additional means of warning,” but not as a replacement for official apps, such as Katwarn or NINA.

The guidelines say that the network operator must send the alert to all devices, not just those of its clients. Thus, if a Vodafone client does not have signal, but is in reach of the network of another company such as Telekom, they will receive the alert from the other network operator anyway. The system also works for foreign SIM cards.

There is no mention of a deadline for the implementation of this system in the guideline, but according to the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BKK) it may be operational by the end of 2022.

“With the publication of this guideline there are no further obstacles to the implementation of this new warning method in Germany,” said Jochen Homann, the president of the Federal Network Agency.

Last summer, heavy rains lead to catastrophic floods that hit the western states of Rheinland-Pfalz and North Rhine Westphalia, claiming 183 lives in total in Germany. Other neighbouring countries were also affected.

It emerged that some communities had not been warned of the severity of the danger, or had not been alerted in sufficient time, prompting calls for better alert systems.