Attack, fire… what is “FR-Alert”, this device for signaling major dangers nearby? – Free lunch

Fires, terrorist attacks or accidents will be reported to people in the vicinity. Natural disasters, serious accidents, terrorist acts… FR-Alert is a new public alert and information system, which will be deployed nationwide from the end of June. This device makes it possible to warn in real time any person holding a mobile phone of their presence in a danger zone in order to inform them of the behavior to adopt to protect themselves. But what exactly is it and how does it work? From the end of June, the new population alert system we have put in place, FR-ALERT, will provide real-time telephone alerts to all people close to a major disaster.
A new system to strengthen the safety of the French following Lubrizol pic.twitter.com/ss3ML1Hjld – Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) May 18, 2022 FR-Alert, what is it? FR-Alert is a population alert system that sends notifications to the mobile phones of people present in an area facing danger. This device will be operational throughout mainland France and overseas this month. “This system makes it possible to complete the existing population alert systems by making it possible to alert, through mobile telephony, to the nature and location of a danger or threat and to indicate the actions and behaviors to adopt to guard against these dangers or reduce exposure to the effects of these threats as much as possible”, specifies the Ministry of the Interior. What information will be transmitted? The notifications may transmit information on: the nature of the risk (a fire, a flood, an industrial accident, etc.); the authority issuing the alert; the location of the danger (establishment, district, municipality, agglomeration, department, etc.); the attitude to adopt (stay at home, evacuate the area, etc.); if necessary a link to obtain additional information on an official website. In addition to the alert notification, additional information relating to the evolution of the situation will be disseminated, such as details on the nature of the danger, the geographical area concerned or the behavior to adopt. The end of the alert will also be the subject of the sending of a notification. What events are affected? Natural events: flood, storm and cyclone, fire, tsunami, volcanic eruption… Biological and chemical: pollution, gas leak, nuclear incident… Sanitary: epidemic, pandemic, agri-food incident… Technological and industrial: breakdown of means of telecommunications, serious accidents on road, rail or air networks, industrial incident… Serious public security event, terrorist act. Upon receipt of the alert, it will be necessary to implement the actions and behaviors indicated in order to protect oneself and reduce the risks of exposure to the danger. Notification ≠ SMS FR-Alert combines two different technologies: cell broadcasting, available from the end of June, and geolocated SMS, which will be deployed later. These technologies make it possible to send messages to all the mobile phones present in the territory concerned by the alert, as soon as they are connected to the network. What is Cell Broadcast (CB)? Cell broadcasting is a technique that allows the same message to be sent via a mobile telephone network to all subscribers registered for this service, within a given geographical area. What is location-based SMS technology? It consists of the distribution of SMS in a given geographical area. The message is broadcast via the relay antennas identified in the sector to be alerted by the SMS Center. Unlike the application called SAIP which was launched by the government after the 2015 attacks but which had been used very little by the French, there is no application to download or registration to do. .