The HEARO Local Alert Receiver was an

emergency management Emergency management or disaster management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actuall ...

tool to relay and display informational

text messages Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible compute ...

in English, Spanish, French and German using RDS technology. It notified local residents in the event of an

emergency An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

within a matter of seconds. HEARO carried

NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

weather warnings and other

public safety Public security or public safety is the prevention of and protection from events that could endanger the safety and security of the public from significant danger, injury, or property damage. It is often conducted by a state government to ensure ...

text alerts, using

FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...

infrastructure with a 60-hour

battery Battery most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source *Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...

life, HEARO was able to work when electricity, telephone and Internet were unavailable. viaRadio Corporation of

Melbourne, Florida Melbourne is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. It is located southeast of Orlando. As of th2020 Decennial Census there was a population of 84,678. The municipality is the second-largest in the county by both size and population. ...

manufactured and distributed HEARO receivers. HEARO claimed to be the only publicly available implementation of any component of a

Common Alerting Protocol The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is an XML-based data format for exchanging public warnings and emergencies between alerting technologies. CAP allows a warning message to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over many warning systems to m ...

-based alert message transfer system. It can also provide

NOAA Weather Radio NOAA Weather Radio NWR; also known as NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards is an automated 24-hour network of VHF FM weather radio stations in the United States (U.S.) that broadcast weather information directly from a nearby National Weather Serv ...

updates.

Active systems

Indialantic, Florida Indialantic (officially incorporated as Indialantic-By-The-Sea, though the official name is seldom used in casual parlance) is a town in Brevard County, Florida. The town's population was 2,720 at the 2010 United States Census. It is part of the ...

adopted the HEARO system after its

volunteer fire department A volunteer fire department (VFD) is a fire department of volunteers who perform fire suppression and other related emergency services for a local jurisdiction. Volunteer and retained (on-call) firefighters are expected to be on call to respond t ...

experimented with it for a year. Indialantic officials wanted an effective method to alert its residents to emergencies, particularly during hurricane season when the only means of evacuating the

barrier island Barrier islands are coastal landforms and a type of Dune, dune system that are exceptionally flat or lumpy areas of sand that form by wave and tidal action parallel to the mainland coast. They usually occur in chains, consisting of anything fro ...

is over one of the

causeway A causeway is a track, road or railway on the upper point of an embankment across "a low, or wet place, or piece of water". It can be constructed of earth, masonry, wood, or concrete. One of the earliest known wooden causeways is the Sweet Tra ...

s. The system is also in use in

Palm Bay, Florida Palm Bay is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. The city's population was 119,760 at th2020 United States Census making it the most populous city in the county and the largest by land mass. The historic section of the city lies on the ...

Leon County Schools Leon County Schools (LCS) is a school district headquartered in the LCS Admin Complex in Tallahassee, Florida, Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is the sole school district of Leon County, Florida, Leon County. History Prior to November ...

Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County, Florida, Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In ...

adopted the HEARO system in 2008. By placing the HEARO receivers in schools and all district facilities, LCS planned to inform the schools' administration of

lock down "Lock Down" is a song by British girl-group Stooshe. It is a song with live instruments, strong beats and thick synths. The video was directed and produced by Damien Sandoval. It includes a cameo from America's Next Top Model and Guess model D ...

s, weather emergencies and other pertinent information. viaRadio worked with other school systems around the country including Florida's

Brevard Public Schools Brevard Public Schools is a school district serving Brevard County, Florida, and based in Viera, Florida. In 2015, the district had about 74,000 students. 24% attend a school other than the one to which they are assigned. In 2009, the school board ...

for more than a year. The Caribbean island

Montserrat Montserrat ( ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is part of the Leeward Islands, the northern portion of the Lesser Antilles chain of the West Indies. Montserrat is about long and wide, with r ...

utilized the HEARO to alert residents of

volcanic activity Volcanism, vulcanism or volcanicity is the phenomenon of eruption of molten rock (magma) onto the surface of the Earth or a solid-surface planet or moon, where lava, pyroclastics, and volcanic gases erupt through a break in the surface called a ...

and other

hazards A hazard is a potential source of harm. Substances, events, or circumstances can constitute hazards when their nature would allow them, even just theoretically, to cause damage to health, life, property, or any other interest of value. The probabi ...

. Coordinated by the Disaster Management Co-ordination Agency (DMCA), with assistance from the

Royal Montserrat Defence Force The Royal Montserrat Defence Force is the home defence unit of the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. History Raised in 1899, the unit is today a reduced force of about forty volunteer soldiers, primarily concerned with civil Defence and ...

and the

Royal Montserrat Police Force The Royal Montserrat Police Service is the police service of the British Overseas Territory island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. The current Commissioner is Steve Foster, JP, BSc, CPA., a native and career police officer of Montserrat. ...

, the local disaster agency started the distribution of HEARO Local Alert Receivers to residents in the most vulnerable areas. The goal of the program was to place the advanced early warning radio in every home, business, school and other critical agencies on island. The

University of Central Florida The University of Central Florida (UCF) is a public research university whose main campus is in unincorporated Orange County, Florida. UCF also has nine smaller regional campuses throughout central Florida. It is part of the State University ...

Orlando, Florida Orlando () is a city in the U.S. state of Florida and is the county seat of Orange County, Florida, Orange County. In Central Florida, it is the center of the Greater Orlando, Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831, acco ...

utilized the HEARO radio system as one of the methods to distribute emergency alerts to campus personnel. "HEARO Radios are also placed throughout the campus in high-occupancy locations."

References

{{reflist Emergency communication Emergency Alert System Emergency population warning systems Emergency management

Active systems

See also

References