Finding fix for troubled Alert Ready

The technology exists to fix some of the design flaws in Canada’s mobile emergency alert system tested last week for an Amber Alert issued in Ontario, some experts say. The Alert Ready program could be more effective at alerting people to emergencies, they said.

“The approach we’re taking with mobile devices is the same we had in 1940, when we had sirens installed on buildings,” said Cosmin Munteanu, a professor of computer science and information at the University of Toronto.

He said that because of smartphone technology, designers had the opportunity to cater details of the alarm to the emergency it’s alerting people to.

Munteanu said that with the system as it is now, people who hear the blaring alarm associated with these emergency alerts for a missing child but don’t have an opportunity to read the text for some reason might believe they’re in imminent danger.

“If somebody in Toronto is alerted to an abducted child or a missing child in Thunder Bay, they can’t help,” said John Rainford, director of the Warning Project.

“But then also, that person in Toronto is like, ‘OK, next time my phone rings in this weird sound, I don’t care,’ ” he said. “And I want them to care.”

It’s a good thing that these kinks are happening now, before the masses need to be informed of a crisis on a larger scale, Rainford said.