A Monroe Electronics Senior Director Is Named To IPAWS

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The senior director for strategic and government affairs at Western New York-based emergency information tech company Monroe Electronics has been appointed to the FEMA National Advisory Council Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, or “IPAWS,” subcommittee.


Edward Czarnecki will serve as a special government employee providing expertise on a wide range of emergency information capabilities.

FEMA established the IPAWS Subcommittee in accordance with the IPAWS Modernization Act of 2015 to review IPAWS and make recommendations to the National Advisory Council. The goal is to ensure that IPAWS incorporates multiple existing communications technologies; incorporates and adapts to future technologies; and provides alerts to the greatest number of people possible, including those with accessibility needs and limited English proficiency.

The appointment follows the June 2017 naming of Czarnecki to the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC). As part of that body, Czarnecki will be involved in a comprehensive evaluation of emergency alerting and emerging technologies, such as the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard and 5G, that could result in new alerting capabilities. He will also help develop recommendations for CSRIC’s consideration on ways to streamline and modernize existing systems (including the Emergency Alert System, EAS) and reduce burdens on licensees.

Czarnecki coordinates Monroe Electronics’ approaches to strategic standards, advanced projects, policy analysis, and regulatory affairs relating to public warning and emergency communications. Czarnecki was also a founding board member of the EAS-CAP Industry Group, which provided vital specifications adopted by both FEMA and the FCC for IPAWS-related EAS equipment. He has been a leader on key federal advisory committees, including the FCC’s CSRIC and the FCC’s Commercial Mobile Service Alert Committee, where he served on the Alert Interface Group for what would become FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system.

IPAWS is integrated with third-party alerting solutions such as Monroe’s DASDEC and One-Net solutions to allow broadcasters and cable systems to display critical emergency information and alerts to their audiences.

The IPAWS integration with Monroe’s DASEOC emergency messaging platform empowers federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local authorities to initiate emergency warnings through the EAS, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), and other public alerting systems.

Monroe Electronics began operations in 1954 designing and manufacturing specialized electrostatic discharge (ESD) instrumentation that continues today. Its headquarters are in the village of Lyndonville, N.Y., to the northeast of Buffalo and northwest of Rochester.