The CGC Communicator Newsletter

Web Posting

Subject: WARN Details

From: Richard A. Rudman, <rar01 (at) earthlink.net>

Date: September 18, 2006


I saw the Senate's passing of WARN legislation got noticed on your newsletter.  Depending on what the House does, and what is ultimately enacted into law, and how DHS manages what is enacted, WARN could bring about many positive contributions to public warnings in the USA.  Elements of what will hopefully go into WARN are already in play to improve EAS in many parts of the country.

I am giving you:


1. A link to the OASIS International Standards website.  On the home page are links to the CAP Version 1.1 standard, as well as the newly approved EDXL v1.0 standard.  EDXL can be thought of as "containers' for CAP encoded messages.

<http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php>http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php


2. A link to a blog site operated by a friend and colleague in my emergency public information work, Art Botterell.

<http://www.incident.com/blog/?p=33>http://www.incident.com/blog/?p=33


3. The link to the Presidential Executive Order: "Public Alert and Warning System" issued on June, 26, 2006.

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060626.html>http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060626.html


Art Botterell is responsible for piloting the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) subset of the XML language through the OASIS standards setting process.  CAP is now the international open non-proprietary standard for warning message exchange.  CAP is one of the pieces that will help put together a solution to the public warning puzzle. The EDXL standard is another important piece.

Art and I served on the original Board of Directors of the Partnership For Public Warning, Inc., a not-for-profit formed in early 2002 that did several seminal reports for DHS, NOAA and other government agencies on public warning issues.  Many of our recommendations went into the President's Executive Order referenced above.

The only prediction I will make is that I believe that CAP and EXDL will be a powerful force that will change the face of EAS and other types of warning with or without the help of the Federal government.

Posted by Steve Blodgett
Earthsignals.com