Bibliographic Information

Common Alerting Protocol, v. 1.1. Edited by Elysa Jones (Warning Systems, Inc) and Art Botterell (Individual Member). Produced by members of the OASIS Emergency Management TC. Committee Draft. April 28, 2005. Document Identifier: 'CAP-V1.1'. 34 pages.

Contributors [OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee]: John Aerts (LA County Information Systems Advisory Body), Patti Aymond (IEM), Mark Benemerito (Sungard Availability Services), Jeff Berg (Motorola), Art Botterell (Partnership for Public Warning), Chris Branton (IEM), Rex Brooks (HumanMarkup.org (Inc), Thomas Bui (The Boeing Company), Len Bullard (Individual), Charles Campbell (Individual), Richard Carlton (Individual), Eliot Christian (US Department of the Interior), Marc Connolly (Oracle), Robin Cover (OASIS), Michael Daconta (US Department of Homeland Security), David Danko (ESRI), Paul Denning (Mitre Corporation), John Dias (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Matthew Dovey (Oxford University), Sukumar Dwarkanath (Individual), Scott Edson (LA County Information Systems Advisory Body), Nasseam Elkarra (Individual), David (Ellis (Individual), Paul Embley (Individual), Jack Fox (US Department of Homeland Security), Lawrence Freudinger (NASA), Gary Ham (Disaster Management Interoperability Services), Travis Hubbard (Disaster Management Interoperability Services), Stephen Jepsen (Oracle), Elysa Jones (Warning Systems (Inc), Joyce Kern (Sungard Availability Services), Hong-Eng Koh (Sun Microsystems), Jeff Kyser (Warning Systems (Inc), Louis Lagonik (Lockheed Martin), Kim Lambert (LMI Government Consulting), Richard Masline (IBM), Carl Mattocks (Individual), Maurice McGinley (Individual), Tom Merkle (Lockheed Martin), Bona Nasution (MTG Management Consultants (LLC), Steve Ollis (Individual), Ash Parikh (Raining Data Corporation), Brian Pattinson (Unisys Corporation), Gary Poindexter (Individual), Walid Ramadan (Individual), Michelle Raymond (Individual), Carl Reed (Open GIS Consortium - OGC), Kent Reed (NIST), Jeffrey Ricker (Individual), David Roberts (Unisys Corporation), Dave Robinson (Wells Fargo), Eleanor Robinson (Anteon Corporation), John Ruegg (LA County Information Systems Advisory Body), Barry Schaeffer (Individual), William Schroeder (ESRI), John Silva (Individual), Kwasi Speede (Anteon Corporation), Michael Thompson (The Boeing Company), Rob Torchon (E Team), Brett Trusko (OASIS), Rick Tucker (Mitre Corporation), Richard Vandame (US Department of Homeland Security), Jerry Weltman (IEM), Preston Werntz (Individual), Konstantin Wilms (Individual), Bob Wyman (Individual), Jack Zhang (Beijing Harmony Technologies Co Ltd).

About the OASIS Emergency Management TC

Background: "[Given] 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."

The OASIS Emergency Management TC was chartered to "design, develop, and release XML Schema-based standards that begin to solve the real-world problems of incident preparedness, response, and emergency management. 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 core scope of this activity shall include, but is not limited to: (1) Unified incident identification; (2) Emergency GIS data accessibility and usage; (3) Notifications methods and messages; (4) Situational reporting; (5) Source tasking; (6) Asset and resources management; (7) Monitoring and data acquisition systems; (8) Staff, personnel and organizational management.

The Emergency Management TC has three subcommittees:

• Notification and Messaging (EM MSG) Subcommittee, chaired by Rex Brooks and Art Botterell, "focuses on the exchange of alerts, notifications, and incident related messages, which not only include various types of informational broadcast, but also electronic ICS (Incident Command System) form representation." See the email archive.
• Infrastructure Framework (EM IF) Subcommittee, chaired by Tom Merkle, "focuses on identifying, researching, and providing guidance on various standards, both developed in and external to the OASIS EM TC, as they relate to emergency and incident management with the purpose of ensuring elemental compatibility with both the currently adopted systems and communication mediums today, as well as tomorrow." See the email archive.
• Geospatial Information Systems (EM GIS) Subcommittee, chaired by Carl Reed, "focuses on ensuring each OASIS EM TC-related specifications has the proper geospatial capabilities to allow a GIS to leverage our formats. Additionally, the group is responsible for providing guidance for filling GIS related gaps within the existing emergency and incident standards." See the email archive.

Related Effort: Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL)

While the OASIS Emergency Management TC progresses the CAP specification toward a version 2.0, its members are also working with other organizations to develop the first components of the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). The EDXL standards activity is coordinated with DHS/FEMA (as part of the Disaster Management eGov Initiative) and with the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC); hosting services are provided by the Comcare Alliance. Background information on EDXL is presented in a January 2005 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) which "establishes an alliance between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) to promote the design, development, release and use of XML schema-based standards or other standards, tools, and processes that will help solve data sharing problems..." According to the accompanying announcement, "The next generation of data sharing standards, being developed with the leadership of emergency response organizations, is called Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). It goes beyond alerting to address the routing and substance of a wide variety of interagency emergency messaging..."

According to a summary from Art Botterell, "CAP came first and focused on alerting, eventing, and attention-management applications. EDXL was a follow-on initiative to create an integrating framework for a wide range of emergency data exchange standards to support operations, logistics, planning and finance. The first instance of EDXL is set to be a common routing-assertion element that can be used to envelop other kinds of XML documents including CAP messages... but that's just one component, not the whole idea... The Technical Committee's plan has been to continue to refine the existing CAP 1.0 spec, which is already in use in a variety of systems and addresses a number of immediate needs, though one or more sub-versions (CAP 1.1 being in work right now)... while at the same time setting up the broader EDXL framework... and then to bring CAP into that larger framework with CAP 2.0 at some point in the future. So, CAP is a particular document for a narrow set of applications, while EDXL was conceived as a much broader framework for integrating numerous documents and application types..." [adapted from a posting of April 21, 2005 by Art Botterell]

A draft of the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Distribution Element was released by the EM-TC on May 17, 2005: This draft describes a standard message distribution framework for data sharing among emergency information systems using the XML-based Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). This format may be used over any data transmission system, including but not limited to the SOAP HTTP binding. The <Distribution> element asserts the originator's intent as to the dissemination of that particular message or set of messages. Note that use of the <Distribution> element does not guarantee that all network links and nodes will implement the asserted dissemination policy or that unintended disclosure will not occur. Where sensitive information is transmitted over untrusted networks, it should be encrypted in accordance with the Web Services Security (WSS) standard with any updates and errata published by the OASIS Web Services Security Technical Committee, or some other suitable encryption scheme. The EDXL Distribution Element (DE) comprises a <Distribution> element as described, optional <targetArea> elements describing geospatial or political target area for message delivery, and a set of <messageElement> elements each containing specific information regarding a particular item of content, which it includes within a <contentObject> structure. The included content may be any XML or other file or document. The <Distribution> block may be used without content to form the body of a routing query to, or response from, a directory service." 'Figure 1' provides a UML diagram for the Data Model of the EDXL Distribution Element.

EDXL Initiative Overview from the Comcare Alliance

"The goal of the EDXL initiative is to facilitate emergency information sharing and data exchange across the local, state, tribal, national and non-governmental organizations of different professions that provide emergency response and management services. The effort focuses on standardization of specific messages (messaging interfaces) to facilitate emergency communication and coordination particularly when more than one profession is involved. Once standardized, any technology vendor or organization can easily develop their XML-based messaging interface.

The EDXL Practitioners group drives priorities and requirements for specific EDXL messages sets and messaging components. The objective is to rapidly deliver implementable standard messages in an incremental fashion directly to emergency response agencies in the trenches, providing seamless communication and coordination supporting each particular process. The effort first addresses the most urgent needs and proceeds to subsequent message sets in a prioritized fashion. The goal is to incrementally develop and deliver standards...

The EDXL initiative is a national effort including a diverse and representative group of local, state and federal emergency response organizations and professionals, following a multi-step process. A group of practitioners from leading emergency response organizations prioritize specific message sets and define base requirements...

Standard Message Sets: [Several] EDXL components and message sets [have been] identified to date for standardization activity. It is important to distinguish between the 'Distribution Element' vs. the other message sets; 'Distribution Element' may be thought of as a container which facilitates the routing of message sets (any properly formatted XML emergency message) to recipients. The message sets (e.g., Alerts, Resource Management) are carried as payloads that are routed by the Distribution Element...

• Distribution Element: An EDXL 'Distribution Element' has been developed [and] the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee is reviewing it to make it a public standard... The Distribution Element carries and routes 'payload' message sets (such as Alerts or Resource Management), by specifying key routing information such as incident type and affected geography, as well as basic information such as incident ID, message type and sending agency. A series of demonstrations starting in October 2004 verified application of the Distribution Element by demonstrating generation, receipt and update of common message sets across different emergency technology tools owned by a diversity of government jurisdictions and emergency response agencies. A growing number of emergency technology vendors are using the Distribution Element in ongoing demonstrations and are prepared to incorporate it into their production systems when it becomes an official standard...

• Alert Message Set: The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) was developed by many of the same parties and processes as EDXL. It was originally sponsored by the Partnership for Public Warning and became an official OASIS standard in 2004. It has been adopted as a payload within EDXL messages, due to the flexibility of the EDXL 'open container model'. CAP messages facilitate the exchanging of hazard emergency alerts and public warnings. Any other accepted standard XML format can also be the payload carried and routed by the EDXL distribution element.

• Resource Message Set: The initial EDXL practitioner group said last fall [2004] that its next priority was message sets regarding Resource Messaging (RM). They asked for messages to request (or respond to requests) for persons and things required in emergencies. A draft document addressing a Resource Message has been developed and is being considered by the Standards Working Group. A number of detailed scenarios are being analyzed to determine the wide range of specific interagency and inter-profession resource messages.

• Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Following Resource Management Messaging, the next priority is to provide message sets addressing GIS information. The GIS message set addresses the need to identify, track, trend, or forecast events and resources. This message set also addresses the need to establish the geospatial context; to communicate about geographic features and things through standard symbols and associated information. For example, a GIS message may assist an emergency responder to assess the geographic scope of an event, to locate a required resource, to pinpoint where a resource needs to report, or to assess other geographic considerations related to an event. The symbology for this message will be 'consumed' from efforts led by FEMA, FGDC and other applicable efforts developing common mapping symbols.

• Situation Status: Situation status is a report providing the overall status of an event and the subsequent emergency response.

• Other specific message sets: Additional message needs will be addressed as the Practitioners raise the need for them..." [adapted from the document "Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Overview and Phased Approach" (Evolution Technologies)]

EDXL: Summary from the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC)

According to a report from EIC ("Creating an Emergency Data Exchange Language"):

EDXL was proposed as a "cooperative effort to define a NIMS-compliant family of shared data exchange specifications encompassing: Incident Notification and Situation Reports; Status Reporting; Resource Requests and Dispatch; Analytical Data; Geospatial Information; Identification and Authentication.

The first design principle for EDXL will be collaboration and transparency; the second will be adopting, promoting and spreading the work that has already been done to other professions (particularly with the very extensive GJXDM dictionary), i.e. no re-inventing of wheels; the third principle will be speed to deployment. The Disaster Management eGov Initiative (managed by DHS' Disaster Management Program) is providing organizational resources and technical support. The involvement of all emergency practitioner groups is encouraged. The ComCARE Alliance has been tasked by DHS to facilitate these groups' participation...

EDXL is intended to "comprise three layers of data exchange standards utilizing XML data syntax and services:

• EDXL Vocabulary: Specified data elements and taxonomies to apply common terminology to data sharing regarding emergency incidents, conditions, resources, activities and outcomes. This will draw heavily on current common-vocabulary efforts (Justice Data Dictionary, FEMA resource typing, NIMS, etc) and the XML standards cited above. This project will support emergency organizations reviewing the XML and taxonomy work product of other professions to find commonalities (the 'common terms' project).
• EDXL Messages: We will develop formats for messages (XML documents) using the EDXL Vocabulary to implement routing of emergency messages (a draft 'header' has been produced, trialed and submitted for standards approval) and business processes such as emergency response resources reports, queries, updates, cancellations and error-handling. The current focus is on resource messages.
• EDXL Interfaces: Technical protocols and formats for routing of EDXL messages over various kinds of data networks and systems, based on SOAP and web-services standards, but generalized for use in a wide variety of communications environments. Our goal is to make it simple and straightforward for vendors to write interfaces from their products to EDXL."

EDXL References:

• Overviews (variously dated):
  • DHS and EIC Memorandum of Agreement as a basis for EDXL standards development: "The next generation of data sharing standards, being developed with the leadership of emergency response organizations, is called Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). It goes beyond alerting to address the routing and substance of a wide variety of interagency emergency messaging..." See the January 2005 announcement and text of the agreement:
    • "Emergency Interoperability Consortium Announces Agreement with Department of Homeland Security to Promote Data Sharing During Emergencies. Groundbreaking Public/Private Sector Alliance Will Promote the Development of Standards for Sharing Emergency Response Information."
    • DHS and EIC Memorandum of Agreement. January 2005. "This agreement establishes an alliance between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) to promote the design, development, release and use of XML schema-based standards or other standards, tools, and processes that will help solve data sharing problems..."
  • "Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). Overview and Phased Approach." From Evolution Technologies, provided by Timothy Grapes. March 10, 2005. [source .DOC, alt version, ComCARE]
  • "Disaster Management eGov Initiative." Briefing by Bill Kalin, delivered at the OASIS Technical Committee Meeting, April 27, 2005. Pages 6-7 present the Incident Management Standards Process Flow and explain the design approach taken for creating information sharing capabilities between disparate incident management software applications. [cache]
  • Participants in the EDXL Process. From Comcare.org.
  • Companies/Organizations Participating in EDXL Demonstrations
  • "Creating an Emergency Data Exchange Language." From the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC). March 01, 2005. Contact Lee Tincher. [cache]
  • Emergency Data Interoperability Demonstration. October 27, 2004. [source .DOC]
• Draft models/schemas for EDXL Distribution Element:
  • Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Distribution Element. Draft released by the EM-TC on May 17, 2005. 10 pages. See the summary. [source .DOC, cache]
  • Draft 2005-05-02:
    • Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Distribution Element. Draft 5/2/05. 8 pages. "This draft describes a standard message distribution framework for data sharing among emergency information systems using the XML-based Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL). This format may be used over any data transmission system, including but not limited to the SOAP HTTP binding." Posted by Elysa Jones to the OASIS Emergency Management TC document repository on 2005-05-03. [source .DOC]
    • Draft object model diagram for the EDXL Distribution Element. Posted by Elysa Jones on May 03, 2005. [source .PPT]
    • EDXL Distribution Element test document, display HTML. See the XML. Draft. Posted to the OASIS Emergency Management TC document repository on 2005-05-03.
    • EDXL Distribution Element XML Schema. Posted to the OASIS Emergency Management TC document repository on 2005-05-03.
  • EDXL from a "message type" point-of-view. Posted May 20, 2005 by Renato Iannella.
  • (OWL-Based) Draft EDXL Distribution XML Schema, posted by Rex Brooks. 2005-04-19. This matches up with the RDF, OWL and RDFS documents.
  • Early draft: EDXL Distribution Message and XML Schema. See: EDXL Distribution Schema and a sample message, posted by David Ellis. EDXL Distribution Message [Draft] Version 1.0

Other Initiatives

Standards for emergency alert and response systems are being developed within many jurisdictions: see for example the listing "Emergency Standards Efforts" from the DisasterHelp.gov web site, and the small collection of XML-related initiatives referenced in "XML and Emergency Management." Here are two examples:

• U.S. National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). "NIEM is an interagency initiative to provide the foundation and building blocks for national-level interoperable information sharing and data exchange, announced in February 2005. It is initiated as a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with outreach to other departments and agencies. The base technology for the NIEM is the Global JXDM. The NIEM will leverage both the extensive Global JXDM reference model and the comprehensive Global JXDM XML-based framework and support infrastructure. Its mission is to assist in developing a unified strategy, partnerships, and technical implementations for national information sharing — laying the foundation for local, state, tribal, and federal interoperability by joining together communities of interest. That foundation consists of three parts: core data components, reusable XML exchange packages, and business-process models for information sharing. The business process drives the creation of information exchange packages that are populated by reusable components..."

  References:

  • NIEM web site
  • NIEM Implementation

• Emergency Services Interconnection Forum (ESIF). "ESIF is the primary venue for the telecommunications industry, public safety and other stakeholders to generate and refine both technical and operational interconnection issues to ensure that life-saving E9-1-1 service is available for everyone in all situations. ESIF enables many different telecommunications entities to fully cooperate and interconnect with each other to determine the best practices and solutions necessary to effectively and promptly deploy E9-1-1 services. ESIF's mission is to facilitate the identification and resolution of both technical and operational issues related to the interconnection of telephony and emergency services networks. ESIF is co-convened by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA).

  References:

  • ESIF web site
  • ESIF Mission

Principal References

• CAP Version 1.1:
  • Common Alerting Protocol, v. 1.1. April 28, 2005. [source PDF]
  • Announcement for CAP v1.1 public review.
• OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee:
  • OASIS Emergency Management TC web site
  • Emergency Management TC Charter
  • Emergency Management TC FAQ document
  • Emergency Management TC document repository
  • Archives for the Emergency Management TC discussion list
  • TC comment archive
  • Archive for the cap-dev list
  • Contact: Mrs. Elysa Jones, TC Chair.
• Earlier CAP news:
  • "Common Alerting Protocol Version 1.0 Approved by OASIS Emergency Management TC." News story 2004-02-26.
  • "OASIS Emergency Management TC Approves Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Draft."
  • "OASIS Members Form Emergency Management Technical Committee."
  • Related: "ComCARE Alliance Publishes XML-Based Emergency Incident Data Set Recommendation."
• External CAP web site
  • CAP Working Documents
  • Why CAP?
• EDXL References:
  • Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL)
• "Disaster Software Standards May Get Muscle from DHS." By Wilson P. Dizard III. From Government Computer News (May 02, 2005). "... FEMA also is working through OASIS to develop the Emergency Data Exchange Language, which will provide a data-sharing methodology for creating a national database of incident reports, according to DHS. EDXL should be compatible with existing and planned networks at all government levels. EDXL developers are coordinating their work with the Global Justice XML Data Model, a large data dictionary sponsored by the Justice Department, as well as with emergency data software standards developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers..."
• "Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL)" - Main reference page.
• "XML and Emergency Management" - General references.