Affiliates of seven OASIS member companies (Blue292, Inc., E Team, Inc., SunGard Planning Solutions, DMI-S, NC4, Wells Fargo N.A., Ship Analytics) have created a new Emergency Management Technical Committee to "advance the fields of incident preparedness and response in addition to emergency management." Blue292, Inc. intends to contribute a notification specification and form data collection specification to the technical committee at its first meeting for consideration as the basis for work. The TC members will "design, develop, and release XML Schema-based standards that begin to solve associated 'real-world' problems of data communication and technology interoperability. These standards will not only provide a framework for data exchange, but also for functionality and service accessibility, all with the common goal of seamless application and data interoperability. The TC's scope of activity is to include: unified incident identification; emergency GIS data accessibility and usage; notifications methods and messages; situational reporting; source tasking; asset and resources management; monitoring and data acquisition systems; staff, personnel and organizational management." The TC Chairs include Allen Wyke (Blue292, Chair) and Rick Carlton (E Team, Inc., Vice Chair).

An initial activity outlined for the Emergency Management Technical Committee is research to "find any related XML-based DTDs and XSD schemas that should be considered or included in its efforts; this will be done in collaboration with OASIS and/or other relevant national standards bodies and authorities." Numerous standards related to incidents, disasters, and emergencies are being updated to support XML notation. Some representative sample activities are referenced in a topic document "XML and Emergency Management", covering:

• Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) Initiative, from the ComCare Alliance (Communications for Coordinated Assistance and Response to Emergencies)
• Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
• Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative (CIPI), from the Open GIS Consortium
• Emergency XML (EM-XML) Consortium
• IEEE Incident Management Working Group (IMWG)
• IETF Incident Object Description and Exchange Format (IODEF)
• IETF Intrusion Detection Exchange Format (IDMEF)

From the TC Proposal:

In a world where a risk is present in everything we do, from breathing air to responding to natural and man-made disasters, there is an enormous need to remove any barriers that prevent or hinder data, communication, and technology interoperability. Many of the barriers are inherit side effects of bringing together diverse people, cultures, geographical locations, and systems, but today's technology can and should be used to help bridge gaps and overcome these obstacles. Specifically, applications can be empowered to support open structured information standards, which can then provide mechanisms to leverage disparate data, any services, and functional assets.

In order to advance the fields of incident preparedness and response in addition to emergency management, the Emergency Management TC has been formed. The purpose of the TC is to design, develop, and release XML Schema-based standards that begin to solve these real-world problems. These standards will not only provide a framework for data exchange, but also for functionality and service accessibility, all with the common goal of seamless application and data interoperability.

TC Proposers:

• Allen Wyke (awyke@blue292.com), Blue292, Inc.
• Rick Carlton (rcarlton@eteam.com), E Team, Inc.
• Joyce Kern (joyce.kern@sungard.com), SunGard Planning Solutions
• Gary Ham (hamg@battelle.org), DMI-S
• Karl Kotalik (karl.kotalik@nc4.us), NC4
• Dave Robinson (robinson1d@netscape.net), Wells Fargo N.A.
• Jay Clark (jclark@shipanalytics.com), Ship Analytics