Civil protection

Civil protection alarm

A central focus of civil and disaster protection is the quick warning and alerting of the population in the event of disasters or crises.

Austria has a well developed warning and alerting system, operated jointly by the Federal Ministry of the Interior
and the offices of the governments of the Federal Provinces. Austria is therefore one of the few countries that has an alert system of sirens covering the whole territory.
The emergency signals can be emitted at any time via approximately 8,000 fire brigade sirens. In Vienna, a total of 165 civil protection sirens have been installed during the past years. The signals can be activated, depending on the danger situation, either centrally or by the Federal Alarm Centre located at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the Regional Alarm Centres of the Federal Provinces or the District Alarm Centres.

Every first Saturday in October between 12:00 a.m. and 01:00 p.m., a civil protection test alarm is carried out across the whole territory of Austria. The test alarm on the one hand serves the testing of the technical equipment of the warning and alert system, and is supposed to make the population acquainted with the civil protection signals on the other.

See also: Emergency Calls

Radiation early alert system

For the fast establishment of radioactive contaminations affecting larger areas, Austria is equipped with a radiation early alert system operated by the BMLFUW, consisting of 336 gauging stations. Given the average distance between the dose rate measuring points of only 15 kilometres, all settlements are well covered. Large centres of population are even equipped with several devices. To enable a better surveillance of the areas close to borders in the main wind direction of foreign nuclear power stations, an additional 10 automatic air monitors have been installed for determining radioactive materials in the air just above the ground.

Via a data transmission network, the dose rate values are permanently transmitted both to the respective provincial centre and the Federal Radiation Alert Centre of the BMLFUW responsible for the monitoring of the environment for radioactive contamination. The Federal Alert Centre in the Federal Ministry of the Interior is also involved in this data transmission network, with the individual measuring results being also available there at any time.

The readings of the radiation early alert system are also retrievable via Teletext of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) (page 784)

See also:
www.umweltbundesamt.at/umweltschutz/strahlenfruehwarnsys/