About

Severe weather alerts are designed to give you line of sight, on weather that could impact your safety.

For members only in the continental US only.

Definition of a severe weather alert

The National Weather Service has three categories of alerts:

– Watch

– Advisory

– Warning

A warning indicates that conditions pose an imminent threat to life or property, and that travel will become difficult to impossible.

The scope for Core Lite is Warnings only. In Core Lite, this terminology has been re-titled to Severe Weather Alerts, to convey to the user, the severity of the event.

For more on severe weather criteria see US weather advisory

Scope

National weather warning alerts are issued based on two geo areas, County and Zone.

Some of the many severe weather alerts include:

– Severe Thunderstorm

– Tornado

– Flash Flooding

– Excessive heat

Frequency of alert checks

Core Lite checks for active alerts every 15 minutes, at 00, 15, 30, 45.

Triggers for alert in Core Lite

The alert is triggered when you enter a County, that is subject to an active severe weather alert.

An alert is displayed:

– When creating a safety plan for a location and an active alert is in place

– When you have an active safety plan, you are inside the safety zone and an active alert is in place

– You are using a live sharing feature and enter a county where an active alert is in place

The alert data is supplied by the National Weather Service (US). See Terms of Service for more.

Maps in 3D make it easier to reference your surroundings.

Lite purple = up to 250ft in height

Green = 251ft – 500ft in height

Blue = 501ft – 1,000ft in height

Deep purple = 1,001ft – 1,500ft in height

For 3D terrain we have included contours and height indicators, so you can view the height of the terrain.

This is meaningful if you need to be rescued from mountainous terrain, and acts as a check- safe, so rescuers know what equipment and resources required i.e. ropes, specialist vehicles, specialist personnel.

When using Core Lite, we strongly recommend the volume is not muted or that it is loud enough to hear alert sounds.

Want to know when help has been automatically activated? Ensure volume is not muted or hearable.

If you have muted or reduced the volume, short burst vibrations occur when a notification is displayed after the end of a scheduled plan. So if you don’t hear it, you will feel the alert.

If a notification is displayed on your locked screen, or in app while using Core Lite, you can long press on the notification to display more information.

This is relevant for notifications such as help alerts.

We make safety simple.

Here’s how:

– Activate help and your live location and intelligence is shared with others, to accelerate the response.

– Intuitive and simple system to use, so you can focus on you, not on your phone.

– Automated help escalation. Signals for help when you cannot.

– Privacy your way. Only share your location when you want.

– Share your live location with others to a nominated location i.e. train station to home.

– Optional automated check in / out SMS to people you select, for location visibility.

Integrated SMS makes life simpler.

We use cloud based, integrated SMS because it is a tried and tested platform.

We do this for the following reasons:

Low touch processes

Once you initiate a feature, Core Lite does everything. No need to manually send SMS from your mobile phone. It’s seamless.

Safety net

SMS are sent automatically when you are unable to. You may be incapacitated or unable to activate the help alert.

At the end of a safety plan, you have six minutes to tell Core Lite what you want to do. Continue the plan. Complete the plan. If you do not respond, the Help alert is automatically activated and SMS sent to those contacts selected in your location safety plan.

No additional cost

The cost of the SMS’s are included as part of your subscription plan. So you don’t have to worry whether your phone plan has enough credit to issue that critical Help alert.

One user, one license.

If you are going to use the Core Lite app from another phone, you must first log out.

Only one active account at a time is permitted.

To adjust the pitch or viewing angle, place two fingers on the screen and move them simultaneously upwards or downwards, depending on the pitch angle desired.

When viewed from the top down view, the map will displayed as 2D.

Core Lite uses notifications, to give you line of sight on the status of your safety plan or live sharing.

We don’t send unnecessary notifications, so you won’t get bombarded.

When using Core Lite, do not activate the FOCUS options including Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Personal.

At the end of the end of the safety plan time, a series of notifications, alarms and vibrations occur every two minutes, alerting you to take action.

If you have a FOCUS phone feature activated, you will miss these.

If haven’t responded to the step escalated notifications, six minutes at the end of the plan, the help alert will automatically be activated and an SMS sent to contacts in your safety plan.

Like the ‘Boy who cried Wolf’ story, if your contacts continue to get non-genuine requests for help, when you really need it, they might ignore them. And that may impact on your safety and ability to respond to the unplanned.

Best practice is, that you have activated a safety plan, keep your phone with you for the duration of the plan.

Do not terminate Core Lite when using a safety feature.

Terminating means, terminating the app in the app switcher, or logging out of the app during use of a safety feature i.e. safety plan.

If you terminate Core Lite all functions will cease and no safety monitoring or live sharing will occur.