Wireless Emergency Alerts in Germany


There are different Wireless Emergency Alerts in Germany, informing citizens about important incidents, disasters and dangerous situations, as well as severe weather. Since February 2019 the alerts of the three main systems have been shared and disseminated in parallel.
Cell Broadcast has not been introduced yet by the German network operators.

Background

The traditional form to inform the public about a disaster in Germany after WWII is civil defence sirens. An equivalent to the US Emergency Broadcasting System to send a message via radio and TV had not existed in Germany for a long time but is now part of the Modular Warning System. MoWas is developed by the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief to warn the population and is coupled to authorities, media and all situation centres of the state governments and their redundancy locations as well as in all integrated control centres in North Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein. The systems is connected to all public broadcasters, a number of private broadcasters, news agency dpa, AFP, dts Nachrichtenagentur, digital billboards of Ströer Media and Wall GmbH, T-Online International, situation room of Deutsche Bahn AG and all relevant Alert-Apps.

NINA

In 2015 the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief at BMI presented an emergency information and news app called NINA. Since 2019, the KATWARN system and the Federal MoWaS system have been coupled: warnings of KATWARN and the NINA app are displayed on both sides.

EU-Alert

EU-Alert is the wireless emergency system of the European Union and officially called European Public Warning Service. EU-Alert is compatible with Wireless Emergency Alerts standard as used in the United States and based on Cell Broadcast. Mobile phone OSes like Android, iOS, and Windows, since 2012 by default support EU-Alert/WEA/CMAS via Cell Broadcast for public warning messages.

Katwarn

Katwarn was the first Alert system in Germany mainly bases on smartphone apps and was introduces in 2009. The service is provided by private company Combirisk GmbH. Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS developed Katwarn on behalf of the major insurance companies in Germany.
Katwarn is an alert- and information system, that informs the affected citizen in disasters and dangerous situations. Since 2011, Katwarn has been in use in Germany in various cities, counties and city states, as well as at the state and federal level. It can be used, for example, via a smartphone app. Registration to the system is free and currently serves around 2.5 million users. The app is available worldwide in the app stores for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.
Since July 2017, Katwarn is also available in Austria.

BIWAPP

The warning app BIWAPP is used by some cities and counties for regional and local urgent reports. The app also displays the disaster warnings of the BBK and the severe weather warnings of the German Weather Service. All notifications and disaster alerts are sent directly from the officially responsible institutions such as civil protection authorities, municipalities and cities as well as their control centres.

WarnWetter

German Weather Service, DWD invented in 2015 a weather warning app, called WarnWetter. At the end of 2017 it was used by 4.9 million users. In 2017 a private weather forecast company brought suit against DWD, because of its free app in 2017. After judgment by the district court of Bonn, there is a free app with commercials and another version for which users have to pay.