With the availability of communications technology today, public alerting is one area that has not seen many improvements.  During any emergency, better communication is always identified as an area for improvement.  Providing online access to accurate, up-to-date information, in addition to alerting via email/TXT message should be part of the city's emergency communications.  Open formats should be used to allow this information to also be shared and distributed to further enhance its reach.  There are a number of initiatives underway such as Canalert/NPAS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANALERT and an Ottawa system http://ottawa.netalerts.ca