With a warning app, the BBK offers a free application that directly provides citizens with important warnings and information and as an option in relation to their location via push notification. In addition to the currently valid official warnings from the Federal Government and the German states, this also includes information from the German meteorological service, as well as current water levels from the flood control centres of the German states.
Fail-safe thanks to redundant infrastructure
A dangerous substance is spreading across the road after a traffic accident. There's a major fire in the vicinity. The weather is turning and is accompanied by heavy rains and gale-force winds. NINA, the emergency information and notification app of the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK), alerts users of these and many other danger situations. Data protection and security have top priority, especially in public institutions. In addition, the solution must function perfectly at all times in order to be able to reliably issue warnings in the event of danger. These factors were therefore very important when selecting a suitable partner for the operation of the app.
T-Systems offers a fail-safe, redundant, and high-performance infrastructure with German data centers that meet the highest security and compliance requirements and ensure maximum performance in 24/7 operation according to individual SLAs. Capacities are also flexibly scalable, so that the planned expansion to five million users by 2020 will be implemented without a hitch. Together, the BBK (The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief) and T-Systems successfully implemented the project in just four months. The combination of the BBK's Modular Warning System (MoWaS) – to which radio, televisions, and sirens, among other things, are also connected – with the now-available NINA warning app for mobile devices offers comprehensive coverage for effectively alerting of the population in the event of danger.
In addition, NINA supports the population with recommendations for how to act with regard to specific events and general emergency tips in order to prepare for possible risks in the best possible manner. Users can choose between list and map views and thus have a structured overview of all existing notifications. T-Systems provides the high-performance infrastructure required for this service, which currently enables the notification of three million users within 30 seconds.
Digitalization comes along with almost unlimited technological possibilities. The NINA warning app is an example of how the lives of citizens can not only be made easier, but also safer. Thanks to T-Systems' high-performance infrastructure, more than 3 million users can currently be warned of dangers in a targeted, fast, and effective manner. Merely 2 billion messages were pushed per month in May 2018.
With the BBK, the Federal Republic of Germany has a central organizational body for civil security that centralizes all relevant tasks in one place. The BBK considers all areas of civil security provision in an interdisciplinary manner, and links them together to form an effective protection system for the population and its basic needs.
