On An Emergency Broadcasting System Demonstration Project

How to ensure that the public effectively transmit information and the emergency information be transmitted smoothly while leveraging the capacity and the traffic requirements, when a major disaster occurs? This is a question awaiting all the telecommunication providers in China and around the world to answer. As the more developed the society is, it more relies on communications, especially mobile communications. When a disaster happens, the demands for communication networks will increase explosively, while the limited capacity of current communication networks cannot meet these needs at all. To solve the problem is as difficult in China as in developed countries such as the United States and UK. Take the Wenchuan Earthquake of 2008 as an example, the public communication networks in the disaster-hit area were in face of an unprecedent challenge. Therefore, to improve the emergency communication networks is imperative so as to ensure effective and timely communication in light of disasters, while public communication networks are being built and strengthened to improve communications. Lessons from practices of other disaster-hit countries should be learned, and a set of emergency communication network standards for both normal and emergent disaster situations should be established, incorporating the characteristics of China, under the guidance of Chinese government. It is not only necessary but meaningful.To do so, and in line with the policy of establishing a national emergency broadcasting system, State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television submitted a request to the Ministry of Science and Technology for national science and technology supporting projects since 2009, and then started the emergency broadcasting project. To validate the feasibility of technologies, a demonstration project was implemented, which was based on the achievements emergency broadcasting information generation and dissemination systems.According to the general technical requirements about anemergency broadcasting demonstration systems, central platforms and local sub-platforms were set up and connected, in which integrated application security authentication technology were applied to ensure the security, credibility and legality of transmitting and receiving emergency information. Systems integrated tests were conducted, in combination of the local radio and television networks. The ground digital television, China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB), wired digital television, FM radio and Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) emergency broadcasting,were participated in the demonstration project. The whole process from the source message reception and analysis to information generation, dissemination, and receiving, was demonstrated and assessed, which laid a foundation for the improvements of the system structure and optimizations of the system functions. In the demonstrations project, Jiangsu Province played an important role as by providing a practical provincial platform and collecting experiment data.