A large-scale test of the Belgian BE-Alert SMS alert system will be carried out on Thursday 4 April. The aim is to encourage more residents to sign up, as few people in Brussels have done this so far.
The alarm system will be activated by safe.brussels and the National Crisis Centre across the region to test the tool's capacity. Subscribing to BE-Alert is free and means Belgian citizens receive immediate messages from local, provincial and national authorities in case of an emergency, such as fires, floods, explosions and evacuations, to reach safety.
The test aims to convince the Brussels-Capital Region population to sign up on Thursday. Safe.brussels has already conducted a month-long digital campaign to raise awareness among residents.
"With 95,000 Brussels residents registered in the Brussels-Capital Region, the number remains relatively small," said Sophie Lavaux, High Officer of the Brussels Agglomeration. In Belgium as a whole, more than 1.2 million contact details are registered on the platform, but only 6% of these are in Brussels.
"This is why we have a test day, to remind people of the importance of notification systems in emergencies and adopting good reflexes."
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The exercise is part of the national test day for the BE-Alert system, which takes place quarterly on the first Thursday of the month. The large-scale tests also allow the capacity and speed of the system to be assessed and any areas for improvement to be identified.
The National Crisis Centre will analyse the results of the test in detail once it is completed. The impact of the safe.brussels campaign will also be assessed.
Throughout the process, the privacy of users is respected as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is strictly adhered to, meaning information provided by citizens will never be used for other purposes.
