Study of Integration Strategy Considerations for Wireless Emergency Alerts

This report supports the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) program, formerly known as the Commercial Mobile Alert Service Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation program, by identifying and analyzing key WEA adoption issues. The study captures key challenges for WEA message originators and offers recommendations to help the community avoid common pitfalls as it plans and implements the WEA service. The report summarizes the current strengths and challenges of WEA, how WEA fits into the alert originator's toolbox, and overall considerations for integrating a new WEA tool or service into an emergency management system as that system becomes ever more complex. The report also covers key topics for adopting a WEA tool or service, including requirements specification, cloud trends, cybersecurity, product selection, testing, coordinating among tools and alerting organizations, operational considerations, and alternatives to buying a WEA solution. For each of these topics, recommendations offer guidance that emergency management agencies can use to navigate the process of adopting and integrating WEA into their alerting capabilities.