Excuse me while I geek out for a moment here. We have been having discussions of late regarding the Oasis standard for CAP or Common Alerting Protocol among other emergency responses.
Actually, we have been having general discussions about emergency response and disaster preparedness as an underlying theme for some time now. CAP is just one way of communicating in a emergency situation. In an emergency, a message sent using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) can mean the difference between your warning being delivered with the needed information or getting lost. Think about past experiences where cell phones, internet and more modern means of communication have crumbled under the extreme load. But often, text messaging and radio were still effective due to the small packet size and simple delivery methods. If you work with a first responder organization, or have a need to implement a warning system that is compatible with other emergency systems, the protocols for the EDXL - Emergency Data Exchange Language are worth investigating.
No, it is not the answer for all time yet. But, it is worth discussing to enhance and push the development.
There is advance progress. I say advance, but isn’t this kind of long overdue? CAP integrates completely with pre-existing warning systems, including:
The major fault I see with most emergency responder systems is not the technical aspects, but the lack of everyday usage. BrandtoBeDetermined has a great post about pop-up readiness. His understanding. It doesn’t work. The question becomes how to build something that can be utilized as part of every day scenarios. There must be a system enough people use consistently and on a near daily basis to be effective during a more chaotic time. We don’t have all the answers, but a step closer each day and thinking about the safety of others will get us there.
If you or your organization are researching and working with response systems, let us know what you are working on.
1 response so far ↓
1 David Coursey // Oct 16, 2007 at 9:38 pm
CAP and EDXL, for whatever it’s used for, should be transparent to the first responder, second responder, all responders. What CAP does, by providing interoperability between various warning systems/tools, promises to make a single warning do what today requires many separate warnings. It also allows very precise geographic warnings to be issued, something that today is only barely possible.
I have done CAP work for a very large software company and am a consultant at a vendor of CAP-based warning systems. I wouldn’t be doing this if CAP wasn’t very important, but once a CAP system is installed, the users shouldn’t have to know what the magic is, just that it works.
So, if you install a CAP system, you will be using it all the time. That is, provided you actually issue warnings. That’s a whole ‘nother subject.
You can see the State of Calif CAP feed at edis.oes.ca.gov/atom.index (or is it index.atom?). My company built that system and a number of others. The NWS is working to issue all its products as CAP messages.
To learn about CAP: http://www.capcookbook.com
My EAS blog: http://www.easupdate.com
David
david@coursey.com
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