Skip to content
KinPilot™Learn & Explore
Menu
← TopicsReading path →

Grades 3–5 · Systems

How does one public warning reach many different people?

A public warning starts with an agency responsible for issuing it. The agency prepares a message about an event and a place. Communication systems carry that message toward people through routes such as mobile-phone alerts, radio and television.

S65 visual explanationAn issuing agency creates a warning message and distributes it through channels that reach people with different access. The invented ten-person group contains four with phone access only, three with broadcast access only, two with both and one with neither. Selected routes cover 9 unique people; 1 are outside those routes. People with both are counted once. These supplied access sets do not establish receipt, understanding or action, and the example is not an emergency procedure.An issuing agency sends warnings through several routesIssuingagencymessagePhone textRoute activeRadio + TVRoute activePeoplewithdifferentaccessSeveral routes can reach overlapping audiences.Receiving a message and understanding it differ.

In the diagramAn issuing agency sends warnings through several routesIssuingagencymessagePhone textRoute activeRadio + TVPeoplewithdifferentaccessSeveral routes can reach overlapping audiences.Receiving a message and understanding it differ.

An agency message branches into phone and broadcast routes that reach overlapping groups with different access.

Several routes matter because people do not all have the same access. Someone may have a phone nearby, while another person may receive a broadcast. Text that works with a screen reader and information in usable languages can make a message more accessible. A message being sent is only one part of the path to being understood.

The same person may receive the message through more than one route. That overlap provides another opportunity to notice it, but does not mean another person has been reached. Other people may remain outside the routes shown. Agencies and the organizations that relay messages therefore consider both the channels and the people who can use them. The path continues beyond sending: a message must arrive in a form that someone can notice and understand.

About this explanation

Starting knowledge: Understand messages, community agencies and counting people without counting the same person twice.

Sources

  • National Weather Service — Warning Dissemination
  • FEMA — IPAWS Tip 43: Accessible Linked Content
← Grades 3–5 topics