Lert Info director Stuart Gunn’s text and email-based system, developed four years ago, now boasts about 10,000 subscribers throughout New Zealand.
It drew information from official sources and allowed warnings and other information to be quickly sent to subscribers, with the alert "geo-fenced" — or restricted to certain areas — as needed.It was technically possible to broadcast an alert to every cellphone in an area but to do so would take a law change, Mr Gunn said.
Only subscribers would receive the alert. However, the system could already spread information faster than the authorities following events like last month’s earthquake and tsunami warnings.
Adding a noise to the incoming texts or emails could wake people at night and the early warning was "vital", he said.
"Why? Because we can save lives.
"The earlier you tell someone there’s a threat, the earlier they can decide what they want to do."
Dunedin Civil Defence staff and previous Governments had seemed disinterested in the system in the past, but acting Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee now said a text alert system was on the way, he said.
Scientists said an early warning system like Japan’s, which cost more than $1billion to build, was possible in New Zealand, the New Zealand Herald reported last week. Japan has a network of seismographs that detect the "P-waves" emitted moments before an earthquake, models what tsunamis could follow, and relays warnings to the public.
Replicating Japan’s system would give New Zealanders extra time to escape a tsunami but a significant upgrade of GeoNet would be required, the Herald reported.
