Germany knew its disaster warning system wasn’t good enough – why wasn’t it improved? (The Local)

In the scope of my work with the FSFE regarding Cell Broadcast, I have been interviewed by The Local about the disaster warning system in Germany and whether a more open and resilient system could have prevented some damage during the Ahrtal floods in July 2021. The article discusses the known deficiencies of the existing system and explores why improvements were not made in time.

Max Mehl of the association, Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), analysed Germany’s warning system along with experts in civil protection and mobile networking after the “Warntag” flop.

They wanted to figure out why the apps failed, and what a more “resilient and open system” can look like.

“Most prominently we found that the system architecture was not appropriate for the actual task,” he told The Local. “The warning day last year was quite realistic in this regard: a number of authorities issue warnings to parts of the population. However, everything goes via a central system and that was overloaded.”

Mehl said this caused the breakdown in issuing alerts through the app on the ‘warning day’.

The article can be read in full on The Local’s website, see above. It’s behind a paywall, but you may find it on archive pages, e.g. this one.