Common  Alerting  Protocol  (CAP)  What, Why, How?  Working  Documents  Demo Applications  Resource Links  Mailing List  CAP Home		The CAP: What, Why and How updated 5/19/2003 You can think of this as a mini-FAQ covering three basic questions about the CAP: "What is it?", "Why do we need it?" and "How can we get there?" What is it? The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is an open, non-proprietary standard data interchange format that can be used to collect all types of hazard warnings and reports locally, regionally and nationally, for input into a wide range of information-management and warning dissemination systems. This project acts on several of the recommendations of the "Effective Disaster Warnings" report issued in November, 2000 by the Working Group on Natural Disaster Information Systems, Subcommittee on Natural Disaster Reduction. It also draws on various earlier professional discussions such as the recurring "Common Alerting Protocol" thread in the Networks in Emergency Management e-mail forum during the 1990s. Why do we need it? Warning systems in the United States today are a chaotic patchwork of technologies and procedures. Not only is there no coordination, there's no mechanism for coordination. Existing nationwide systems are limited in scope both by their technological legacies and by the organizational mandates and priorities of their sponsoring agencies. In particular, none of the existing national systems are entirely suited to the needs of state, local and private emergency-information programs. As a result, dozens of different technical and operational warning systems have sprouted, seemingly at random, throughout the nation. The Common Alerting Protocol will benefit a) the public, b) public agencies and private concerns (such as industrial plant operators) with warning responsibilities, and c) developers of new sensor, threat-evaluation and warning-dissemination technologies: Automatic multi-channel dissemination of warning messages will extend the reach of warning messages and enhance the effectiveness of those messages by providing timely corroboration of warnings from several sources. Such a system will also simplify the work of alerting officials by giving them a write-it-once method for issuing warnings over multiple dissemination systems without duplicate effort. The Common Alerting Protocol will enhance government's "situational awareness" at the state, regional and national levels by providing a continual real-time database of all warnings, even local ones. (This information about local warnings, unavailable to state and local officials at present, could be crucial to the timely evaluation of certain threats, such as, biological terrorist attacks, which are most readily identified by detecting patterns in local responses.) Special-needs populations including the deaf and hearing-impaired, the blind and visually-impaired and non-English speakers will be better served by consistent delivery of warnings and public-safety information through all available channels. By decoupling the diverse elements of the national warning infrastructure the Common Alerting Protocol will allow technology developers and sponsors to expand, upgrade or even replace existing facilities without disrupting entire systems. A mechanism for warning-system "interoperability" will free system providers to innovate and improve their services without facing barriers due to technological "legacies." How are we getting there? During 2001 and 2002 the ad-hoc Working Group of more than 130 emergency-management practitioners, technologists and academic experts developed and refined a draft specification for the CAP alert message. In 2003 the national non-profit Partnership for Public Warning endorsed the CAP effort and sponsored its submission to the OASIS XML standards process. The OASIS Emergency Management XML Technical Committee has accepted the contribution of the CAP draft standard and is now conducting a rigorous technical and operational review and refinement of the design in its Notification Methods and Messages Subcommittee.		CAP E-Mail  Discussion List An e-mail discussion list is available to emergency management and systems professionals who wish to discuss concepts and details of the CAP. To join the discussion: http://www.incident.com/ mailman/listinfo/cap-list/. This list is not for announcements, advertising or advocacy of any particular program or product other than the CAP itself.