ATSC Forms 3.0 Advanced Emergency Alerts Implementation Team

WASHINGTON – The Advanced Television Systems Committee has formed a new implementation team for advanced emergency alerting as a key element of the emerging next-generation ATSC 3.0 television broadcasting standard.

“Advanced emergency alerting promises to create new significant value for viewers, consumer electronics manufacturers, broadcasters and the public safety community. The addition of advanced emergency alerting capability and the accompanying rich-media warning information represents a compelling ATSC 3.0 application,” said ATSC President Mark Richer.

The charter for the ATSC Advanced Emergency Alert I-Team is to “provide a venue for industry discussions of issues related to implementation of emergency alerting. This I-Team may address business, regulatory and technical requirements for the successful inclusion of emergency alerting and the successful commercial rollout of ATSC 3.0.”

Participation in the ATSC Advanced Emergency Alert I-Team is open to all organizations offering or planning to offer services, products or other efforts relating to or in support of implementation of ATSC 3.0. While the I-Team will not develop standards or recommended practices, it may make recommendations to ATSC and other standards development organizations as appropriate.

The ATSC Advanced Emergency Alert Implementation Team, chaired by industry veteran Jay Adrick of Gates Air, builds on the work of the former ATSC Mobile EAS I-Team. “Advanced emergency alerting with ATSC 3.0 will significantly enhance the nation’s emergency preparedness and give broadcasters important new public service tools,” said Adrick, who highlighted the new I-Team’s scope of work:

Activities may include development of prototype equipment and program materials, emergency alerting and/or subsystem components, and rich media generation systems and capabilities; broadcast station implementation, integration with stations’ existing alerting and/or local emergency manager organizations; interoperability “plugfest” testing, field trials and demonstrations; market studies, marketing, branding and promotion; compliance and certification; and standards recommendations to the ATSC.