OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is a simple, flexible data interchange format for collecting and distributing “all-hazard” safety notifications and emergency warnings over information networks and public alerting systems.

THE NEED

Warning systems in the United States today are “a patchwork of technologies and processes,” according to the national non-profit Partnership for Public Warning.  Different systems have evolved to meet different threats in different places.  Until now there’s been no way to distribute warnings consistently over all available channels.  Nor has there been any way to monitor the whole picture of local, state and national warnings at any one time.  In addition,  decisions about new alerting systems have been fraught with concerns about compatibility and operational complexity.

COMCARE’S APPROACH

In November 2000, the National Science and Technology Council released a report on “Effective Disaster Warnings.” One key recommendation of the blue-ribbon panel was that “a standard method should be developed to collect and relay instantaneously and automatically all types of hazard warnings and reports locally, regionally and nationally for input into a wide variety of dissemination systems.”

An international working group of more than 130 emergency managers, information technology and telecommunications experts, and COMCARE convened in 2001 and adopted the specific recommendations of the NSTC report as a point of departure for the design of a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Their draft went through several revisions and was tested in demonstrations and field trials in Virginia (supported by COMCARE) and in California (in cooperation with the California Office of Emergency Services) during 2002 and 2003.

In 2002, the CAP initiative was endorsed by the national non-profit Partnership for Public Warning, which sponsored its contribution in 2003 to the OASIS standards process. In 2004, CAP version 1.0 was adopted as an OASIS standard; CAP 1.1 was formally adopted in October 2005.

FROM VISION TO REALITY

COMCARE continues to support the use of CAP and demonstrates it when conducting data interoperability demonstrations. CAP is being adopted and used by a growing number of organizations.

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