How the emergency notification is arranged

Large-scale flooding in the Far East was the theme of the beginning of the fall number 1. This is the second catastrophic flood in two years, if you recall Krymsk. And as always in such situations, the question of warning the population arises. “MegaFon” is sometimes reproached that its disturbing SMS do not reach everyone and not always - however, “there is a nuance”, which is that MegaFon is the only cellular operator dealing with point alerts in cooperation with the Ministry of Emergency Situations. How this cooperation is arranged, on what basis messages are sent, whether an SMS can be received about an emergency situation with a negative balance in the account, what incidents have to be notified most often - I went to find out at the Federal Center for Management and Monitoring MegaFon.

The Federal Control and Monitoring Center was formed in 2010, combining at the federal level the control functions that were previously performed by the regional centers. FTSUM's responsibility is to control the quality of communication, assess network performance, monitor line operations, collect and consolidate MegaFon’s unified technical statistics, and alert subscribers about accidents and emergencies. The latter direction is the result of cooperation between MegaFon and the Emergencies Ministry.

SMS and other mobile notification options have never been considered by the special services as the main public warning tools. Those are still television, radio and street loudspeakers.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of Emergency Situations has always been interested in expanding its tools, so in the same 2010, when FTSUM appeared, a cooperation agreement was concluded with the Ministry.
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CBC and SMS

For notification of the mobile network FCUM and MES use two methods: Cell Broadcast (CBC) and SMS distribution. In both cases, the system automatically selects all subscribers that are on the network within the specified MES radius.

CBC is a passive notification technology: the message “MES Emergency! 0030 ". MegaFon has three such allocated short numbers - 0031 and 0032 more. By calling this number, the subscriber listens to the full text of a message about what is happening, provided by the Emergencies Ministry (description of the situation, necessary actions, etc.). The number of notified is the number of callers and listening to the answering machine with information.

It can broadcast to a vast territory, CBC is simply to provide, it allows not to overload the equipment, does not cause irritation with frequent use in case of small emergencies.

Not all mobile phones support this technology. It works only in 2G networks, simple devices cope well with it, in smartphones the owner must set this feature in the settings on his own. iPhone, for example, does not support CBC at all. Think apple makers.

Requires additional action - dial a short number to listen to the message.

Since it is used quite often (due to the frequency of natural disasters in the area), people get used to it and do not pay enough attention to these reports.

The principle of SMS-mailing does not need to be explained. But this method of notification has its reasons:

There is a beep, SMS is accepted by all phones.

SMS distribution is more informative.

The distribution process takes some time, as the equipment sends SMS in turn. As a rule, it does not take more than 15-20 minutes, but they can be critical in such cases.

Based on this, CBC is used when it is necessary to cover a large number of numbers registered in the network, and SMS is more effective over a relatively small coverage radius. The border lies on the number of one hundred thousand subscribers.

The platform sending an SMS about emergencies is in no way connected with billing, so the subscriber receives a message with any balance, if his SIM card is registered on the network within the alert radius, the phone is switched on and available.

Since 2010, the number of sent messages has been constantly growing - in 2010, about 50 thousand MegaFon subscribers were notified, in 2011 - more than half a million, in 2012 - 15 million, and over 25 million notifications were sent for the full 9 months of 2013.



This is particularly impressive given the fact that the Cell Broadcast-alert is considered to be the calls received by the subscribers. At the same time, the cooperation of MegaFon with the Emergencies Ministry is absolutely non-commercial - the operator considers this project, in fact, as an additional information service for its subscribers.

Houston, we have problems!

FCTM is located in the same business center in the Savyolovskaya metro area as the capital branch of MegaFon OJSC. Most of all, I was interested in how much it would look like a familiar picture from films - a large hall with a bunch of employees, monitors and obligatory giant screens all over the wall.

The Holy of Holies is hidden behind an inconspicuous door with the number 402:



As it turned out, yes, it looks like it, although the atmosphere is completely different: no nervousness, disturbing calls and running around. Medium open space; everything is everyday and quiet as in the office of a provincial advertising agency. However, given the specifics of the Center, this is rather good news: everything is calm in Baghdad.





What is shown on these screens to an outside observer is impossible to understand, but for the operators of the Center it contains a lot of information.



The operating system is plain old Windows XP, some data is displayed in IE7 browser.







The inside of this data wall is a system of projectors hidden in cabinets.





Follow other operators:

How it works

When the Ministry of Emergency Situations needs to send out an alert, they send the coordinates of the point, the radius within which it is necessary to notify the population, the alert text and the sound informer for the callers to the short number to FCMC.


(for the curious, I uploaded a file with a real alert request for the Khabarovsk Territory to the Yandex disk).

Delivery method - regular email:



However, the pranker will not pass: before sending out an alert, FCUH members request confirmation of shipment by telephone. Response time - from receiving a letter to sending messages - within 40 minutes for CBC-mailings and 10 minutes for SMS.

Khabarovsk flood

The last big situation was, of course, due to flooding in the Far East. The FCMU is also responsible for the interaction of the Far Eastern Branch with the Emergencies Ministry. The first CBC alert took place on July 20 in the village of Ivanovka. Since July 28, 2013, alerts around the Amur Region have become almost daily. The Jewish Autonomous Region began to announce from August 8, from 9th - the Khabarovsk Territory. In total, at the request of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, 129 mailings were made to MegaFon subscribers with a coverage of 53,428 people.



Only the participation of “MegaFon” in protecting people from the elements was not limited to this. The press service reports:

1. Temporary accommodation centers in the Jewish Autonomous Region, the Amur Region, and the Khabarovsk Region are provided with mobile phones that allow you to make free calls to the phones of any operators throughout the territory of the Russian Federation for the duration of the emergency.
2. Two groups of children from the Jewish Autonomous Region (250 people) who are in health centers of the Primorsky Territory are provided with mobile phones that allow you to call free of charge to the phones of any operators throughout the territory of the Russian Federation for the duration of the emergency.
3. Volunteers in the Amur Region and the Khabarovsk Territory are provided with SIM cards with the ability to make free calls to the phones of any operators throughout the territory of the Russian Federation while working in the emergency area
4. A fundraiser was organized via SMS to the account of the Khabarovsk branch of the Russian Children's Fund. To make a transfer, it is enough to send an SMS to a free number 9400. If you send a blank message - 50 rubles will be transferred to the fund’s account, if you specify the amount - for example, send an SMS “200”, then 200 rubles will be written down. The amount of donations can be any amount from 50 to 15,000 rubles without a transfer fee.
5. SMS informing the population in the emergency zone about the possibility to use voice mobile communication with a negative balance
6. Information prepared for an information campaign about the possibility of communication at zero balance.
7. In round-the-clock mode, MegaFon is working on providing mobile communications in the emergency region. The company provided mobile communications to the local Emergency Management Department and to the volunteers of the AMUR 13 group, increased the signal power, and monitors the status of base and mobile stations.

By the way, the base stations are equipped with uninterruptible power supplies, so even in the event of a communication break, incl. electricity - they can work for another day or two. Useful information in case of a zombie apocalypse, for example: cellular communication will hold on clearly longer than the battery of my Xperia.



Soon, SMS and CBC notifications will cease to be the exclusive privilege of MegaFon subscribers: the experience of cooperation between FCMM and the Emergencies Ministry has not gone unnoticed, and from the end of 2013 a presidential decree comes into force, according to which all mobile operators of the country will already have to cooperate with the emergency services in the notification of citizens. So even if you do not watch TV and do not listen to the radio - do not despair, the news about the Day of Judgment will not pass by you. However, alert alerts, but the main thing - that the bad news was less.