Pay attention to the sound on the phone: it is the IT Alert, the public warning system

Today, at 12, it’s the turn of Lombardy. On phones geolocated in that territory – that is, connected to regional telephone cellstherefore switched on and with a telephone connection – a test message is delivered IT Alertthe new national public warning system similar to the one already in use in many countries around the world. This is a way to quickly inform the population in case of emergencies of all kinds, from natural disasters to important security alerts relating to your territory.

Obviously, in this case, who receives the message he doesn’t have to do anything. Possibly, if you want to contribute to the success of the tests, you can go to the site it-alert.it and fill in the survey easily identifiable so as to provide valuable details on how to improve operation.

For the rest, the trials have been ongoing for months in all Italian regions and for the last phase they resumed last September 12th: today also in Basilicata and Molise together with Lombardy, on 21 September in Lazio, Valle d’Aosta and Veneto, on the 26th in Abruzzo and in the autonomous province of Trento, on 27 in Liguria and on 13 October in the autonomous province of Bolzano.

For the moment, the objectives of this activity – which started in June with the first five experiments in Tuscany, Sardinia, Sicily, Calabria and Emilia-Romagna – «are introduce people to the new system who could be involved in emergency situations when IT-alert is operational, verify its functioning in relation to the different types of telephone and operating systems and collect information from users, via a questionnaire, to implement the service”, as stated on the site official warning system.

Attention (also to possible frauds): There are no applications to download or other services to sign up for. The service, at the head of the Civil protection, is in fact anonymous and obviously free: cell-broadcast technology allows IT Alert messages to be sent to a group of geographically close telephone cells, thus selecting an area that corresponds as closely as possible to that affected by the emergency. However, there could be small errors: messages that also reach phones that are on the border of the different telephone cells or non-delivery in the case of areas without coverage. The texts in recent months serve precisely this purpose, in view of the definitive launch next year.