Earlier this month, on October 13, the Organization for the Advancement
of Structural Information Standards (OASIS) voted to approve the OASIS
Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) v1.2 USA IPAWS Profile as a technical
specification for public alert systems. The profile will enable
emergency managers across the country to use a common format for
creating emergency alert messages that can travel across multiple alert
systems. The availability of such a profile furthers FEMA’s objective
of increasing interoperability across federal, state and local alert
systems.

EMERGENCY STANDARDS INTEROP
DEMO - Featuring EDXL CAP, DE, HAVE at EMEX
'09 - Booth
#102

The OASIS EM and EMA technical Committee TCs are proud to announce the receipt of a 'Letter of Appreciation' from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The letter is in response to the successful Interoperability Demonstration and Summit held at the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Traning Session.

The Summit presentations are also available.

The OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee (TC), the Emergency Management Adoption TC and the Emergency Interoperability Member Section are pleased to present the 'Distribution Element' technical white paper. The Distribution Element (DE) is one of a family of Standards that support Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). EDXL began in 2004 as a project of the Disaster Management eGov Initiative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a means to enhance inter-agency emergency data communications.

The
OASIS EI Summit InterOp will showcase interoperable applications and tools that
support OASIS Emergency Management standards, including the Common Alerting
Protocol (CAP) and the Emergency Data
Exchange Language (EDXL) suite of standards.  Attendees of the EI Summit and
the NIEM training event will have ample opportunities to view InterOp
demonstrations throughout the event. Demonstrations will address the operational
and economic benefits, as well as coherent frameworks that enable a more
accurate, rapid, coordinated emergency response.  

The process of drawing a roadmap to develop an enhanced public warning infrastructure
is gaining momentum thanks to a renewed collaboration among
stakeholders in the new Emergency Alert System.

FEMA's adoption of the Common Alerting Protocol standard — a text-based, detail-rich system that local and state emergency managers will use to generate
public warning messages — appears to be getting closer.

OASIS Members,
The OASIS Emergency Interoperability (EI) Member Section (MS),
http://www.oasis-emergency.org/, is pleased to announce two newly elected
Steering Committee members; Matt Walton and Jeff Waters. Mr. Walton is an
honorary member of the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC). Mr.
Waters - Computer Scientist at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center
Pacific, US Department of Defense (DoD). The OASIS Emergency
Interoperability (EI) Member Section accelerates the development, adoption,
application, and implementation of emergency interoperability and

AtHoc, EDS, ESI Acquisition, Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admistration (NOAA), Warning Systems Inc. (WSI), and Others Collaborate to Facilitate Emergency Communication

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced today its intention to adopt during the first quarter of calendar year 2009, an alerting protocol in line with Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) 1.1 as the standard for the Integrated Public Alert and Warnings System (IPAWS).

The OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee seeks input from users who have implemented the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) OASIS Standard. Use cases, requirements for new elements, enhancement to existing elements, and other suggestions are welcome. Feedback will form the basis for discussion and consensus on possible changes and enhancements to CAP.

See the TC's announcement.