Digital Emergency Alert System

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The Digital Emergency Alert System (DEAS) is a system designed to alert first-responders and civilians in the event of a national emergency. It is based upon and supplements the Emergency Alert System (EAS) by sending out text, voice, video, and other digital messages to mobile phones, pagers, radios, and televisions.

Although the Emergency Alert System and its predecessor, the Emergency Broadcast System and an even earlier predecessor CONELRAD, have always allowed the transmission of both video and audio, there have been limitations that would be eliminated by the DEAS. For example, the DEAS allows the ability to broadcast "bottomless" audio messages (i.e. a message with no definite ending) and streaming video. It also allows near-instantaneous transmission without the delays that occur as EAS alerts trickle through the system.

The system, managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is currently in the final stages of its development with an expected activation and roll-out in southern and eastern states by the end of 2006 and elsewhere by the end of 2007.

[edit] History

In 2004, Las Vegas' PBS member station, KLVX, was the first station in the United States to demonstrate what digital television has to offer in times of emergency. The Homeland Security Department saw first hand how digital transmission of information could be broadcast in the open, encrypted and ever targeted to specific users or groups of users. That demonstration and the follow on technology led to the DEAS.^[1]