Common Alerting Protocol

The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is an example of an open standard applied to disaster management. Although this protocol started as an effort of an ad hoc group, it has now been adopted by several international organizations and U.S. federal agencies.  For example, one of the U.S. Presidential Initiatives describes the current uses of CAP for Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) as well as future uses of the standard.

Using CAP, emergency responders can (source):

• Ensure alert messages reach the right audience at the right time
• Reduce the workload and costs associated with using multiple warning systems
• Enhance technical reliability
• Ensure consistency in the information transmitted over multiple delivery systems
• Reduce costs and operational complexities by eliminating the need for multiple custom interfaces to warning sources and dissemination systems

In October 2005, entities such as the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Interior, Boeing, Oracle, IBM, HP, General Motors in a group of 48 companies and organizations approved the latest version of CAP as an OASIS Standard.

Since CAP is and open standard, it has allowed some organizations to create systems based on CAP to perform more complex task for disaster management.  For example, TACAPASS is a software solution that helps amateur radio operators to automatically distribute tsunami and weather alerts.  Namely, the system reads CAP alerts from NOAA.  Then CAP alert text information is parsed and an audible file is automatically generating by an open source text-to-speech engine.

The following is another example of the uses of CAP by Contra Costa County to distribute alert via various media.


As another example, the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System uses CAP to provide near real-time alerts about natural disasters around the world.

CAP-based commercial products have started to appear.  Horman America manufactures a siren system as well as a public address system both based on CAP alerts.  Similar manufacturers include Logic Innovations, Mobile Foundations.  Other solutions include a web-enabled Network eXtensible Emergency Operations (NeXEO) that is fully interoperable with other systems via CAP.

NOAA weather alerts are available in CAP format.

Case study: Newsbug, OVIS & APECS

In 2003, the Emergency Management of Australia funded Newsbug as a project at Murdoch University to develop a multi-channel Public Emergency Warning System.  One of the project objectives was to understand how new media can be used to extend the reach of public information systems and improve community response to emergencies.

The result of the project is a proof-of-concept public emergency message system supporting:

• Voice, fax, email, SMS, webpage message channels
• List-based location-based alert delivery
• CAP-based interoperability

Later on, OVIS was formed as an organization to further develop platforms like Newsbug.  For example, the Western Australia Police awarded OVIS a contract to build multi-agency Autonomous Public Emergency Warning System (APECS).  It is a "public emergency communication system designed to increase community resilience to withstand the effects of natural and human-induced hazards of all types."

As shown below, CAP is a fundamental component to allow OVIS solutions to interoperate with various systems.

The design of Newsbug and APECS follow a set of guidelines for the design of public emergency warning systems including guidelines for handling multiple recipients, channels, hazards, stakeholders, senders and platforms.  Other recommendations that OVIS has formulated include a write-once input message policy, stating that "public warning systems should be 'write-once, multiple message output' in order to reduce errors, and to preserve the consistency and authority of messages."

Links

• A more comprehensive list of organizations using CAP
• Sample CAP alert
• Press release during CAP launch