Emergency alerting in the Nordic countries: A cross-national survey of alert timing and channel preferences

Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of everyday life. In many countries, cell phones now serve a new purpose: emergency alerting. Following a 2019 EU directive, European countries must be equipped to send emergency alerts to all mobile phones within reach of their telecom services. Here we present results of a survey in four Nordic countries: Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. The survey asks how respondents prefer to receive information in different types of emergencies, whether by text message, cell broadcast emergency alert, smartphone application, social media, broadcast media or air-raid siren.