At the request of the Ministry of Internal Administration and in the exercise of its duties, on 16 February, ANACOM took part in a meeting aimed at examining the best way to establish and operate a system to provide warnings to the population in emergency situations as part of civil protection.
Consideration will be given to the best practices already followed in other countries where systems are used to warn populations potentially affected by the occurrence or imminence of major accidents, incidents or disasters (forest fires, tsunamis, adverse weather events, floods, radiological emergencies, industrial accidents, terrorist attacks, others), in order to provide information on the event and on the self-protection measures to be adopted.
These population warning systems are covered by Lei de Bases de Proteção Civil (Basic Civil Protection Law) and Lei das Comunicações Eletrónicas (Electronic Communications Law), whereby it is incumbent on Autoridade Nacional de Proteção Civil (National Civil Protection Authority) and on ANACOM to undertake, in cooperation with the relevant companies, the necessary actions to put these systems into operation.
The meeting, which took place at the Ministry of Internal Administration, was coordinated by the Chairman of ANACOM's Board of Directors and was attended by the Secretary of State for Civil Protection, representatives of Autoridade Nacional de Proteção Civil (National Civil Protection Authority), ANACOM, ERC, electronic communications operators (MEO, NOS, VODAFONE and NOWO), radio operators (RDP, TSF, Rádio Renascença and Rádio Comercial) and television broadcasters (RTP, SIC and TVI). Putting this project into operation, which is supported by all participants in the meeting, will now be continued by the technical groups.
This measure is intended to provide a progressive response to the provisions of the Estratégia Nacional para uma Proteção Civil Preventiva (National Strategy for Preventive Civil Protection), approved by Resolution of the Council of Ministers no. 160/2017 of 21 October, in particular as regards the strategic objective of "Improving preparedness against the occurrence of risk", which includes the priority area on" Monitoring, warning and alert systems".
