Integrating future communication technologies for the downstream component of public warning systems

Natural disasters have often made the headlines in the past years. As a consequence, many actions have been started by the public authorities to reduce the damages and the number of casualties. In that objective, the French project RATCOM aimed at developing an alert system in case of coastal tsunami due to underwater landslides. Its downstream component combines reliable and efficient communication systems to relay the alert. In parallel to the integration of the existing technologies in the project demonstrator, a survey analysis has been performed to identify the communications technologies and networks, which are in preparation but not yet operational, and which will increase the efficiency and quantity of individuals reachable by the future population alert networks. Each of these technologies is not sufficient by itself, but their combination improves drastically the efficiency of the alerting global system. This paper presents the RATCOM architecture, focusing mainly on its downstream component. For each candidate technology, it analyses how it can satisfy the requirements and improve the efficiency of the

public alerting system. The final demonstration of the project is also described, as it assesses the feasibility of the system and how the overall impact on the alert dissemination is improved

by the design of this new architecture.