Showcasing Alerting Standards

The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) has been percolating for several years. Its intent is to provide a standard for emergency notification, alert, and warning messages so that one message can serve all systems. CAP has been slow to catch on. Many notification systems in the field don't support it. Some key vendors don't use it, even though FEMA has endorsed it and a CAP requirement shows up from time-to-time in requests for proposals.

Some industry and government organizations with interests in notifications, alerts, and warnings get together soon to give CAP a nudge. At a summit in Baltimore next week, they'll talk about CAP - even demonstrate how it works. The summit is sponsored by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the group with the lead creating the CAP standard. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Interoperability and Compatability (DHS OIC) is supporting the event.

In addition to CAP, sessions will be held on what's called Emergency Digital Exchange Language (EDXL). EDXL is an "umbrella" standard, designed to facilitate emergency communications beyond notifications, alerts, and warnings.

We applaud the effort. Standards will support the move toward managed system-of-systems to ensure that multi-modal delivery works. Standards generally evolve slowly, and the path to adoption is often difficult. But, it sure seems that this is taking a particularly long time and we don't see CAP and EDXL being embraced aggressively by end-users and key vendors at this point. Perhaps the summit will help a bit, but more whollap is needed to really make the CAP dream a reality.