A new version of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) Program Planning Toolkit has been designed to aid alerting authorities and alert originators at federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels in developing an alerting program plan using best practices.
The new interactive, web-based toolkit walks the user through an alerting plan template in 5 steps, resulting in a downloadable, formatted draft of a comprehensive alerting plan tailored to their agency's operational capabilities. It is estimated that completing all 5 steps will take approximately 2 hours.
Included in the toolkit is a message template creator that walks the user through the research-based recommended format for critical alert messaging for a variety of scenarios, in both English and Spanish. Also included is an updated list of frequently asked questions about IPAWS.
Document-based version
Released in November 2021 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate, the new toolkit builds on the document-based version of the toolkit released in September 2020.
To learn more about the toolkit and to try the new web-based forms to draft an agency's alerting program plan, one can visit FEMA's IPAWS Program Planning Toolkit webpage.