Major Insert the following content for a new section 3.4
3.4 Action Spectrum
On occasion, alerting authorities use alerts to engage an audience to take action as a secondary event in response to some primary triggering event. The action requested by the alerting authority can range from monitoring for more information; evacuating the area; sheltering in place; or engaging in specific actions intended for the well-being of the individual or community. These secondary events may be simple recommendations or mandated orders to do something specific.
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The COVID-19 pandemic re-acquainted world to “stay-at-home order” alerts. These alerts were becoming common during the pandemic and alerting authorities were becoming very prescriptive in their alert naming to get the message across. Rather than issuing hundreds of alerts, all referred to as “COVID-19” alerts or “infectious disease” alerts, authorities altered the wording and named the alerts to such things as “stay-at-home order” and “fake vaccine warning”. As an alert type, their names directed the audience to the secondary event cited.
The corresponding event type could still easily be “infectious disease”, but a modified situation occurs where authorities are instead inspired to cite the secondary event as the event type, but that argument is a based on the mis-conception that the event type and alert type should be the same thing.
Other action spectrum examples are “advisory”, as with “travel advisory”, “alert” as with “AMBER alert”, “orders” as with “boil water order” and “evacuation order”, etc… Even “warning” as with “weather warning” is an example of this. In this latter example, the word “weather” is an adjunct to warning, meaning the event of interest is the warning itself and the audience engagement of the information they have just received, not the real or anticipated weather that triggered the alert.
The term “AMBER Alert” is an alert type created to heighten the awareness of the secondary response event that involves the participation of the audience. There is no actual secondary event unless some or all of the audience takes part. NOTE: AMBER is an acronym for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response” where the idea is to illicit a response by the audience. The word “alert” is added to distinguish the acronym from the color amber if heard or seen in a message.
The recommended approach in CAP for secondary action events is to keep the <eventCode> element tied to the triggering event for comparison purposes; use the <headline> element for the alert type referencing the secondary event; and use either option for the <event> element as preferred by the alerting authority. Using the examples above, the text snippet “stay-at-home order” or “AMBER Alert” would appear as part of the <headline>, with the “infectious disease” code or “missing persons” code indicated in the <eventCode> element. As for the <event> element, either “stay-at-home order” and “AMBER Alert” as references to the secondary event, or “infectious disease” and “missing person” as references to the triggering event.