[Talk-us] Civil Defense Sirens?

[Jeffrey Ollie]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 12:29 PM, Lord-Castillo, Brett
<BLord-Castillo at stlouisco.com> wrote:
> Just wondering what would be the purpose of mapping civil defense sirens?

Because they are there isn't a good enough reason?

> You have to make some significant decisions of what kind of information to include about the sirens (for example, without range and/or model, you cannot derive projected coverage; without directional coverage you cannot identify nearest covering siren).

Right now I'm just interested in where they are... More information is
welcome but obviously that can be more difficult to obtain.

> Sirens are also one of those areas (like mapping major pipelines) that do fall under homeland security protections for sunshine laws.

Without some proof I call FUD.  Anyway, sunshine laws are for
governments, not for individual citizens.  I'm not expecting people to
drop in on the local emergency management agency and ask for a map of
all the sirens...

> Some jurisdictions (mostly cities) are open with their siren locations, some of them are very protective (mostly those places whose sirens have been subjected to attacks by siren hackers in the past or who have particularly significant security concerns).

I don't see how mapping sirens really increases the security
concerns...  Most civil defense sirens near me are mounted on tall
towers and advertise their location quite loudly on a regular basis.
The ones that I have mapped recently have no physical protection
either, not even a fence around it (except one that is literally in
someone's back yard).

> Mapping site specific sirens (like those used for electric generation facilities) can especially draw scrutiny.

Well, hanging around an electric generation plant and surveiling it is
likely to draw scrutiny no matter what you are looking for.

> As for the feasibility, I recently did a project to map 210 sirens from aerial photos and ground work, and it was virtually impossible without prior knowledge of the siren locations and high resolution aerial oblique photos. In all, it took about 60 hours of work (and that was with a list of locations).

Hey, I'm not expecting miracles!  I was really expecting people to
take a walk around their neighborhood and note the locations of the
sirens, much like they map their favorite pub.  Eventually we'll get
them all...

-- 
Jeff Ollie