- Introducing FEMA IPAWS/PLAN/CMAS program and how Amatra fits in. 7/11/12
FEMA IPAWS/PLAN/CMAS
Federal officials and the nation’s largest wireless providers announce Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN) that will send emergency alerts via text message to mobile phones. |
| Download Application: Fema-IPAWS-Application. For questions completing or submitting please email ipaws@amatra.com or call 317-536-9234. |
Advantages of IPAWS
The following sub set of issues could be addressed as a result with Amatra’s partnership with FEMA when the need to communicate with large number of citizens.
- Dramatically reduce cost.
- Significant improvement in deliverability (priority messaging by carriers)
- No signup
- Geo location based notification. If you are in the affected area you would get notified even though you don’t live there.
- Potential grants. Future public safety communications (for Alerts) grants would require compliance to certain standards (Amatra is already compliant). See Section 5.3 : http://www.safecomprogram.gov/NR/rdonlyres/7C73CFA8-DC8B-487C-82A0-42BD7C06F3BA/0/FY_2011_SAFECOM_Guidance_121510.pdf
Available schedule/timeline of the FEMA IPAWS program:
- One June 15th FEMA will begin accepting applications from Public Safety Agencies to get access to the system.
- Initially the system will allow interoperable communication between approved agencies.
- During August 2011, the system will allow testing with the PLAN compliant protocols. Agencies can begin testing to make sure they can connect to the FEMA system with PLAN compliant messages (Amatra software will take care of this).
- The fully operable PLAN/CMAS infrastructure should be available for citizens outreach by end of the year or early next.
How can Amatra help?
Where Amatra comes in context of the above video is the “origination” of messages. Public Safety personals would require system like Amatra to trigger/manage messages. Amatra has signed a MOU with FEMA and has completed integrating with their infrastructure. Validation of the Amatra System was completed in June 2 and we are awaiting final report. We are aiming to be the first to integrate with FEMA IPAWS system
It is advised that interested public safety organizations quickly sign up for access to the system and receive their credentials. It typically takes 1 week now but and as more entities sign up the process time could significantly increase.
Amatra can help with the paper work and answer any questions you have. 
