Prior to December 31, 2012, the Wireless Amber Alert program allowed the public to receive wireless SMS text-based notifications when children were abducted. The Amber Alert program depended on members of the public to sign up online and designate areas for which they wanted to receive alerts. They would then receive alerts for the designated areas regardless of where they were located at the moment.

After December 31, 2012, the Amber Alert adopted the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) protocol and the legacy system was retired. WEAs allow certain approved federal and state and local government authorities to issue emergency alerts notifying citizens of severe weather, evacuations, and Amber Alerts. Since its inception, over 33 thousand alerts have been issued.

This is how the WEA works: Government agencies send alerts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which then sends the alert to participating wireless providers. Wireless phone companies serving the majority of the public–including the 4 nationwide carriers–voluntarily participate in the system. The wireless providers then push the alerts to mobile phones in the impacted communities.

The question is: What has been the impact of WEA’s wider reach on the recovery of missing children? First, an Amber Alert success story is one where the child is safely recovered as a direct result of an Amber Alert being issued. After December 31, 2012, the time between activation of alert and recovery dropped significantly.

Between 2009 and 2012, pre-WEA, the average percentage of cases resolved in 2 hours or less was 27%. Between 2013 and 2017, post-WEA, the average percentage of cases resolved in 2 hours or less was 41%. The WEA resulted in a 14% increase in cases resolved in 2 hours or less. This difference in averages is statistically significant, which means that the difference is unlikely to be due to chance. See Figure 1, below, for a summary.

Figure 1.  Difference in Means Between Pre-WEA and Post-WEA of Amber Alert Cases Resolved in 2 Hours
	Mean Pre-WEA	Mean Post-WEA	Difference in Means	T-Statistic	Significant?
Resolved In 2 Hours or Less	0.27	0.406	0.136	3.9848	Yes

The WEA also impacted the reasons for success stories of Amber Alerts. One caveat is that the reasons for success stories jumped after 2013 and not after 2012 like in the case of time to resolution. There currently is no understanding as to why the change in reasons lagged by one year, but I present the case for the WEA changing the reasons for success after 2013.

In particular, there were three reasons for the success of the Amber Alert that changed after the WEA adoption. The three reasons are: Individuals provided tips to law enforcement, individuals recognized child and/or abductor from alert, and individuals knew of child’s/abductor’s whereabouts and notified authorities. I call this group of reasons, “Tips, Recognition, and Whereabouts.”

Between 2006 and 2013, the pre-WEA time period, “Tips, Recognition, and Whereabouts,” accounted for 32% of success stories. Between 2014 and 2017, “Tips, Recognition, and Whereabouts,” accounted for 45% of success stories. The difference between pre-WEA and post-WEA for “Tips, Recognition, and Whereabouts,” is 13% and is also very statistically significant. Figure 2, below, shows the details of this analysis.

Figure 2.  Difference in Means Between Pre-WEA and Post-WEA of Almber Alert Cases Resolved by Tips, Recognition, and Whereabouts
	Mean Pre-WEA	Mean Post-WEA	Difference in Means	T-Statistic	Significant?
Tips, Recognition and Whereabouts	0.3225	0.45	0.1275	2.5408	Yes

Finally, I turn to the topic of distance. There was no discernible difference between pre-WEA and post-WEA when it came to the distance between missing and recovery locations. Between 2006 and 2012, 79% of recovery locations were within 100 miles of the missing location. Between 2013 and 2017, 77% of recovery locations were within 100 miles of the missing location. The difference between the pre-WEA average and post-WEA average is 1.6% and, as Figure 3 shows below, the difference is not statistically significant.

Figure 3.  Difference in Means Between Pre-WEA and Post-WEA of Amber Alert Cases Recovered within 100 Miles of Missing Location
	Mean Pre-WEA	Mean Post-WEA	Difference in Means	T-Statistic	Significant?
Recovered within 100 Miles of Missing Location	0.787891	0.7721718	0.015719	0.5906	No

This analysis shows an example of the impact of push notifications in the context of Amber Alerts and recovering abducted children. The wider reach of the WEA made recovery time faster. Also, the success of recovery depended more on individuals in the general public recognizing the child and/or abductor and notifying authorities.

Sources: https://www.amberalert.gov/statistics.htm , https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/wireless-emergency-alerts-wea