CAP for EAS

[Elysa Jones <ejones@warningsystems.com>]

Friends,  

As I mentioned on our call last week, I think there are four legs to
supporting the strong chair of alert and warning.  This is a concept
that I would like to be prepared to present if asked during the FCC
meeting on Monday.  Please provide me any comments on suggestions
you have. 

Definition of the Standard
The Common Alerting Protocol has been chosen as the Standard for
alert and warning messaging.  The Standard was created by the OASIS
Standards Development Organizations Emergency Management Technical
Committee (EM-TC) and endorsed by the FCC.  This was a very good
first step.  CAP has various optional fields that can be used by a
product to pass data needed by a specific enterprise, e.g., duration for
an EAS message.  In order to achieve interoperability among products
in this enterprise, it must be agreed how these fields are to be
used.

Agreement on use of terms/fields  
The definition of how these fields should be used in the EAS System
should be defined by agreement between an industry group of product
providers and those that will use EAS on a regular basis, the broadcast
industry.  The Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) is an
established industry group that has worked with the development of CAP
and other emergency standards for many years and has an MOA in place with
DHS to facilitate this work.  The EIC also has a close working
relationship with the OASIS Emergency Management Technical
Committee.  We propose that representatives from the Society of
Broadcast Engineers (SBE), the National Cable and Telecommunications
Association (NCTA), the National Alliance of State Broadcasters
Associations (NASBA) and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)
work with the EIC and the FCC’s Public Safety & Homeland Security to
develop a consensus for how CAP fields are to be used for EAS.  An
agreement between the broadcast industry representatives and the EIC on
how these terms should be used, endorsed by the FCC would go a long way
to achieve interoperability among these systems.

Compliance testing
In order to assure interoperability, there must be some established
and agreed to testing procedure.  DHS established the NIMS Support
Center (NIMS SC) in 2005 – a program that operates under a Cooperative
Agreement between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the
Justice and Safety Center/ Eastern Kentucky University (EKU). The NIMS SC
provides direct support to the Incident Management Systems Division
(IMSD) of FEMA’s National Integration Center (NIC).  The NIMS SC is
designed to develop new first responder tools, enhance technology
integration and evaluate and report on products and standards to improve
incident management and information sharing throughout the first
responder community.

The program provides products and services in the following areas:
Compliance and Technical Assistance, Resource Management, Standards and
Product Evaluations, Training and Exercises, Guidance Documents and Job
Aids.   NIMS SC has been established and is in place for the
purpose of testing vendor products for compliance to Standards. 
They are set up and have already tested various products to the CAP
Standard.  Once they have an authoritative source to determine how
the optional fields should be used with EAS, their test facility could
truly test to the interoperability of CAP based EAS systems.  This
is the next logical step and could be achieved by the FCC endorsing the
NIMS SC for compliance testing.

Migration
There is yet another piece that must be addressed.  That is the
migration from the existing world of Part 11 ENDECs and various State EAS
Plans to new or upgraded CAP compliant systems to support the mission of
emergency alert and warning.  Where we agree that CAP is the
Standard for interoperability, there is still a hardware component. 
Much like Part 11, this component must be well defined and tested. 
A corollary to the State EAS plan should also be drawn.  Currently,
the State EAS plans define the distribution of audio messages within the
State.  As EAS has matured and is being prepared for the emergency
information hiway, the State EAS plan concept must also be considered and
migrated.  We offer that the EDXL-DE (Emergency Data Exchange
Language Distribution Element) be considered.  The EDXL-DE provides
for the routing assertions for the enveloped emergency data (CAP). 
In other words, to whom and under what circumstances that data is sent
and/or received.  This Standard was published in May of 2006 and is
also maturing and gaining wide acceptance.  The NIMS-SC is already
testing vendor products for compliance with this Standard.  This
will allow systems of systems to send and receive data in support of
emergency functions.  Migration of the current EAS should consider
this Standard as well for a complete EAS solution.

I hope to be sure and let folks know that CAP is good but not the only
part of this equation.  However, I didn't want to get too
technical.  Please post any edits or ideas you have.

Regards,
Elysa Jones, Chair
OASIS EM-TC
CTO/COO 
Warning Systems, Inc.
256-880-8702 x102