Common Alerting Protocol (CAP, X 1303) Implementation Workshop

Rev 1 after review in plenary

Common Alerting Protocol (CAP, X 1303) Implementation Workshop

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) 6/7 April 2011

Welcome Session

The meeting was called to order by Eliot Christian, Senior Scientific Officer, WMO.

The participants were welcomed to the Workshop by the Director of WMO/WIS, Mr Peilliand Shi, by Ms Carol Cosgrove-Sacks of OASIS and by Mr Bilel Jamoussi of ITU-T.

Working Session 1

1.1The Agenda was adopted.

1.2The details of the organization of the two days of the Workshop were confirmed.

1.3 A brief over-view was provided by Eliot Christian regarding the past workshops that have built the basis for today’s event, all held in Geneva in 2006, 2008 and 2009,

2.2 Systematic Development of Early Warning Systems – Maryam Golnaraghi, Chief of WMO Disaster Risk Reduction Programme

The commitment of WMO and other UN agencies were explained, especially the priority given to alerting and early warning systems to reduce los of life. In recent years despite the increasing cost of disasters in economic terms, effective warning systems have contributed significantly to reducing loss of life. Hazard and risk analysis are key to success.

More countries are moving towards Multi-hazard Risk-based Early Warning Systems with coordination across all levels of government and throughout the geographies affected.

Very strong and effective coordination is essential, but there are many different models for achieving this goal with varying levels of technology. Good preparedness at local level, both between local government and communities, reduces risks to loss of life.

The 10 basic principles of effective EWS were explained, with emphasis on sustainability.

2.3WMO Register of Alerting Authorities – Samuel Muchemi, Scientific Officer in the Public Weather Services Programme of WMO

The need for an international Register was explained, together with the content needs and the role of the editors.

The WMO Register of Alerting Authorities is the most authoritative resource – essential for alerting organizations to know who they may rely on in times of urgency.

Questions concerned how the chain of custody can be recognized, and how global agencies, like WMO, can deal directly with lower level bodies and take account of the great variety of implementations, with responsibility given to many different organizations.

2.4Introduction to Object Identifiers (OIDs) and their use by WMO – Olivier Dubuisson of ITU-T & Telecom Orange.

OIDs provide the basis for organising a tree structure of registration authorities; OIDs are increasingly being introduced by developing countries to engage in the information society.(UPU also operates the OIDs for its own purposes)

The web-based OID Repository was presented, operated by France Telecom Orange, which offers a facility for spreading information about OIDs and their role. , linking to the WMO alerting identifiers.

ITU-T OID Handbook is shortly due to be available.

A question from Australia raised the problems of OIDs not being well known. It was explained that there is no unique identifying system, but the OID system is the most widely recognized and respects all member countries of the UN, with the possibility of implementing hierarchies of implementers’ in conformity with local practice and structures. (Requested that the Report should include the benefits of the OID system)

Eliot Christian of WMO informed the participants about the Administrative Document that explains how the OIDs operate – see the presentations online.

2.5 Adoption of CAP in MeteoAlarm – Alexander Beck of the Austrian National Weather Service.

The implementation of the CAP in the MeteoAlarm system is ongoing, almost completed, and used in the EU’s alerts from the 27 national weather services.

There was discussion about the identifiers needing to be translated into numeric format for use in xml format as OIDs within the concept of the CAP.

2.6 CAP Implementation by the German Weather Service (DWD) – Siegfried Fechner

DWD has three types of warnings and CAP fits mainly into the public warnings category. Longer term, it would be interesting also to use the CAP in the category of Aviation Warning

Currently the WD uses a text format - hopes to use it as a standard input format for warning in future, moving towards using the full functionality of the CAP.

Some problems: <parameter> tag as machine readable element for meteo parameters, which DWD cannot do at present. Maybe next version of CAP will achieve this?

DWD would like to have the message ID managed by the WMO repository and the originator. This is especially importent in the EU system, where DWD originates and then the OID comes from Metoalarm.

2.7 China Meteo Organization – pilot use of CAP – Ms Chunfang Wang)

The CMA is the national public weather service, with its own TV channel – more than 20 million families as viewers, and provides widespread broadcasting of weather information via websites, newspapers, and loudspeakers announcement systems in villages. China aims to have an all hazard all media public warning system. But there are challenges, first of technology, especially in remote areas and for certain disadvantaged groups, and second, the challenge of coordination.

CMA is trying to build an integrated platform and CAP Profile.The CAP would be mainly implemented via mobile phone network and internet. But there are many gaps between CAP and CMA system.

Information was given about the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (a first generation communications system) to be replaced with asecond generation system. Beidou terminals are on many fishing boats, used for short message transmissions.

There was a suggestion to have a recommendation from the Workshop to have a group to enhance CAP, especially localization factors, and possibly a CAP implementation Handbook. The meeting was informed that ITU had written a handbook, but WMO will consider the possibility of a new publication.

Elysa Jones of OASIS explained that the CAP Adoption TC would work closely with ITU and WMO to address these issues and ensure that the work is well-coordinated.

The ITU-T SG17 will soon be meeting to review X1303, and participants were invited to submit suggestions. The meting was informed that the main liaison is between OASIS and ITU.

2.8 Deploying CAP for Health Alerting in Sri Lanka & India – Gordon Gow of the University of Alberta explained the results of projects undertaken in selected developing countries on communications technology and public safety.

2.9 CAP in the Sahana Freeware for Disaster Management- Nuwan Waidyanatha explained the technology of the health alerts and bio-surveillance, including the use of SMS on mobile phones in India and Sri Lanka. But the knowledge of CAP in these countries is poor.

2.10 CAP and Google Crisis Response – Prem Ramaswami & Steve Hakusa (both part of GoogleDotOrg’s crisis response team). The role of Google in trying to do good is the motivator, and Google’s interest in CAP is strong. Google has scale and worldwide reach. Google is seeking ways to promote the use of the web to alleviate suffering from disasters, The CAP provides trust

How can CAP do better on the web? The presentation explained the key requirements to make the alerts usable for Google across its range of products, with clear and succinct terminology and links back to the alert initiator and create maps or related data.Google is looking for messages that are :Simple. secure, efficient, standard and scalable. The Google technique known as PubSubHubbub – developed by Google staff – would generate global distribution. The distinctions between Atom and EDXL-DE were discussed, also the use of Java language. Google would like to publish all alerts through a special website –

2.11 CAP and Disaster Information in Japan – Yoshiaki Sugiyama and Norihasa Washitaka of Japan Meteo Agency gave some background on the recent earthquake/tsunami in Japan and the ways in which the “Japan disaster mitigation project” in xml could assist. The presentation compared the CAP and the JMX. Currently JMA does not use CAP. They are looking at how to increase the accuracy of disaster warnings, maybe via CAP. Mobile phone and radio/TV broadcasting are the most used media for alerting in Japan.

2.12 The R3i – regional and multi-national CAP network – Elizabeth Klute of the Region Risk Reduction Initiative, funded by the EU and UNDP in the Caribbean.She explained the regional framework for disaster response and the national/colonial structures and the US National Weather Service. She explained how the vulnerable islands could be to some extent protected by strengthening their capacity to predict and prepare for disasters, at regional as well as national levels. R3i is open source and transparent, devoted to multi-lingual public registration, based on a clear understanding of the policy and protocols to be used.

2.13 Using CAP in a flood early warning system in the Caribbean – Marvin Forde of the Institute of Meteorology & Hydrology, Barbados. He explained the range of hazards and natural disasters in this, the second most hazard prone area of the world with a densely populated coastline. CAP could be highly relevant for inclusion in many alerting uses, especially flood emergencies.

2.14 CAP lessons learned by Direct Relief International – Dr Andrew Schroeder and Joel Myhre explained that DRI uses SAP Enterprise Data and GIS for humanitarian medical relief; DRI is also closely with ESRI and Google. It is based in Santa Barbara,CA. DRI uses ICT driven supply chains to respond to medical relief needs, with most of its supplies coming from major medical and pharmaceutical companies around the world. It works closely with the California Emergency Management Agency.

End of Day I

Day II 7 April

2.15 Public Alerting & CAP in Canada – Norm Paulsen, Senior Meteorologist, Environment Canada, explained the utilisation of the CAP, based on open architecture and open standards, with multi-agency support. Canada works closely with USA (IPAWS and Canadian MASAS)…….). CAP Implementers in Canada exchange many supporting contributions and tools from partners, e.g. event location “layer”. The CAP Canadian Profile is designed to implement “good practice”, based on interoperability, dynamic change, and XML. Environment Canada is in process of producing a Reference Implementation Guide.

OASIS provided the scope for “categories “– it was wisely left to the implementers to decide what use they choose to define in the “category” context. He encouraged users to contact the OASIS EMTC for revisions and any specific assistance needed.As Chair of the EMTC, Elysa Jones agreed that OASIS would be ready to listen and assured the meeting that OASIS has a process in place for change and evolution.

2.16 CAP in the South African Weather Service – Sisanda Hanise, Senior Web Developer at the SA Weather Service. She explained the rather limited usage of CAP currently in weather related information, but SA intends to develop also for aviation and marine. Within the weather context, it has an effective Warning Generator tool.

The system will hopefully be fully operational in the next two months.

2.17 CAP in Australia – Gregory Tott, Project Manager in the Australian Attorney General’s Department which is responsible for the CAP Australian Profile (CAP-AP). The presentation demonstrated the wide range of hazards, the use of CAP, and the development of CAP-AP through the standards approach. There is no federal approach to CAP usage – there are 7 independent state systems. There is a national approach to effective community warnings. CAP v.1.1 is implemented in several states, but not all.The bushfire alerting system, SENTINEL, also works well alongside the CAP.

In most states, the Fire authorities issue CAP warnings of bushfires, but limited common actions. Each state has multiple agencies for emergency services, which represents a challenge for the national CAP authority. It has joined OASIS to strengthen its resources to develop the national CAP-AP. Australia has borrowed from Canada’s experience. A priority is to consult with neighbouring states in the region to get a more coordinated approach.

2.18 CAP in New Zealand – Peter Kreft, Chief Forecaster of the New Zealand Meteorological Service.It was explained that currently CAP is not used in New Zealand, so the presentation focused on why it is needed. NZ has a national civil defence and emergency plan, with involvement of many local authorities and agencies. From the NZ perspective, CAP offers advantages for targeting recipients. The discussion stressed the need for defining the “authorities” that are relevant to each emergency.

2.19 CAP in US National Weather Service – Herb White, Dissemination Services Manager in the US National Weather Service, NOAA,who explained that currently the CAP production is being re-engineered, so changes may be coming. The national broadcast capacity evolved from 1960s to digital technology, with IPAWS since 2006.

IPAWS uses CAP from single message to many different media. From 2012 there will be a national Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) which will serve the general public – it will be an opt-out system for the imminent threats. The presentation showed how the CAP is linked to traditional legacy systems, the HazCollect emergency message flow. Future expectations: FEMA adopted CAP 1.2 in 2010 and IPAWS compliant CAP 1.2 will operate from Fall 2011, in time for the CMAS in 2012 (with max 90 characters). A CAP wiki is being introduced in spring 2011. Crowd sourcing?

2.20 CAP and the Severe Weather Forecasting Demonstration Project- Peter Chen, Chief of Data Processing and Forecasting at the WMO, Geneva, explained that the WMO project focuses on improving capacity in developing countries. It is a platform for preparation and dissemination of multi-hazard early warnings. CAP could fit into the dissemination part of the project.

2.21 CAP and Flood Forecasting – Tomasso Abrate of WMO showed how flood forecasting is generally done and explained the complexities of warning at different stages of the flooding process. He emphasized the problem of being sure about the status of the alerting authority.

2.22 The GEONET Cast Alert Channel and the CAP over GTS– (the WMO’s global telecommunication service) – Simon Elliott from EUMETSAT explained how EUMETSAT disseminates CAP via EUMETCast. For example, it distributed info regarding volcanic ash via CAP.EUMETSAT can disseminate via CAP on its dedicated Alert Channel in very rapid real time. The CAP message in XML is wrapped for routing to GTS, and the wrapper removed when received. The presenter stressed that CAP is really important as it ensures interoperability.

2.23 CAP Support in ESRI’s Open Source GeoPortal Server – Clive Reece, Senior Project Manager at ESRI, explained what the GeoPortal does and how it relates to WMO Weather Information System (WIS). GeoPortal catalogues XML documents and could leverage CAP in GeoPortal. The presentation showed how to create a CAP schema definition (via sourceForge), include CAP catalogue, and the display options and aggregate CAP feeds. To improve it, inclusion of the CAP ontology would help.

2.24 CAP Support in CellCast Technologies – Tom Fahy of CellCast International Government Affairs via telephone – explained how CellCast Technologies advocates use of CAP for all emergency messaging. The presentation provided some examples of cell broadcasting of emergencies.

2.26 Climate Watch System – Omar Baddour, Chief of World Climate Data & Monitoring, WMO, explained how WMO seeks to provide advanced notice of extreme weather to improve climate risk management. WMO’s Climate Watch System (CWS) monitors climate anomalies and extremes and communicates results.

2.25 The OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee – Elysa Jones, Chair of the TC, explained the advantages of OASIS for emergency managers as an organization that is open with free standards. She drew the attention of the participants to the forthcoming EDXL Webinar 14 April. She announced that she was not with Warning Systems any more.

She demonstrated the standards process that led to CAP, and the EDXL family of standards. The OASS EMTC is independent, not subject to directions from any major agency or enterprise. She explained the evolution of the CAP standard and the link to ITU (Rec X1303) and subsequent errata.

Next stage? CAP Adoption. Champions have been the WMO globally, in the USA, and other countries. Sustainability of the standard may be an issue. Currently the EMTC has some sub-committees, e.g. CAP Profiles; Tracking of Emergency Patients (TEP); Situation Reporting standard soon to appear.

Other work of the EMTC includes EDXL family, mainly for the health sector.

EMAdoption TC is developing outreach, inter-op demos, and producing documents and collaterals.

CAP logo ?

Ccs to EC

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