Island Country of Tonga Partners with Everbridge to Enhance Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems & Response

• Tonga is the first project of its kind under the United Nations' "Early Warnings for All" initiative to be funded through World Bank.
• Everbridge to enhance Tonga's national, multi-hazard early warning public notification system using Cell Broadcast technology, ensuring rapid alerts to protect citizens against severe weather events, natural hazards, and climate change-induced impacts.

BURLINGTON, Mass. - September 17, 2024 - Everbridge, Inc., the global leader in critical event management (CEM) and national public warning solutions, today announced that the Kingdom of Tonga has selected the company's Public Warning platform to strengthen the country's early warning system, as part of the Early Warnings for All initiative led by the United Nations. Everbridge will empower and support the functionality of the Tonga Mobile Applications Community MHEW and Response System (MACRES). As climate-induced extreme weather poses heightened risks to Tonga, the nation recognizes the pressing need to fortify its warning capabilities to safeguard its population. Implementation of the Everbridge Public Warning platform is underway and is expected to be tested in the first part of 2025.

"With the Everbridge Cell Broadcast platform, we are confident in our ability to provide rapid and targeted warnings to our communities," said Laitia Fifita, Acting Director of Tonga Meteorological Service. "This technology will significantly improve our early warning and response capabilities, ensuring the People of Tonga safety and minimizing the impact of natural disasters. We are grateful for the support of Everbridge in advancing our mission: 'to monitor and predict changes in the weather, climate, ocean and other environmental conditions through governance, cooperation and partnerships, the exchange of data, information and services, application, research and capacity development.'"

Tonga is the first project that involves a Small Island Developing State under the United Nations' Early Warnings for All banner to be funded through the World Bank through the Pacific Resilience Project (PREP)-Tonga. For this initiative, Everbridge contracted with the Tonga Meteorological Service under the Ministry of Meteorology, Energy, Information, Disaster Management, Environment, Climate Change and Communications (MEIDECC).

In the wake of the devastating volcano and tsunami disaster in January 2022, Tonga initiated the development of MACRES under the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative's Accelerated Support Window (ASW). As a critical component of this initiative, Everbridge Cell Broadcast technology will play a pivotal role in ensuring rapid and widespread dissemination of warnings to communities, harnessing Tonga's widespread mobile phone coverage to facilitate timely responses to hazards and disasters.

The innovative Everbridge Cell Broadcast technology allows warnings to reach most smartphones without requiring internet data. Notably, the technology supports two-way communication, enabling communities to provide real-time reports, facilitating targeted responses from the Tonga Meteorological Services and the National Emergency Management Office.

"We are proud to partner with Tonga to bolster their early warning capabilities and enhance public safety across the island nation," said David Wagner, Chief Executive Officer of Everbridge. "This initiative strengthens Tonga's response capabilities and supports the United Nations' call for global early warning system coverage. As the global leader in public warning solutions, we are committed to helping Tonga protect its citizens and build resilience against climate-induced hazards."

Everbridge provides the public warning technology to power the national alerting systems for countries across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions, helping to keep people and visitors safe and informed during critical events.

Everbridge empowers enterprises and government organizations to anticipate, mitigate, respond to, and recover stronger from critical events. In today's unpredictable world, resilient organizations minimize impact to people and operations, absorb stress, and return to productivity faster when deploying critical event management (CEM) technology. Everbridge digitizes organizational resilience by combining intelligent automation with the industry's most comprehensive risk data to Keep People Safe and Organizations Running™. For more information, visit https://www.everbridge.com/, read the company blog, and follow on LinkedIn. Everbridge… Empowering Resilience.

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