A Roadmap to Emergency Data Standards
From CAP Cookbook
"Interoperability" is a byword in emergency management and homeland security. While many people think of interoperability in terms of two-way radios, the same challenge for information sharing exists among the digital information systems that play a crucial and growing role in public safety and emergency response. Indeed, it's becoming hard to find a critical process in homeland security or day-to-day public safety that isn't in some way dependent on computers and embedded computing devices.
A coordinated family of efforts is underway within government and industry to help our various computerized systems share information promptly and accurately in emergencies. Existing "transport" standards like the Internet Protocols and the "802.11" standards for wireless data communication offer a foundation, but much remains to be done in defining a common language for emergency data exchange.
The following is a quick guide to some of the major current emergency data sharing standards and how they fit together:
Contents |
The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
Scientific research into what makes emergency warnings effective has identified three critical factors:
- Warning messages need to be coordinated over multiple delivery systems, both to reach the greatest number of people at risk with the greatest reliablity, and to let the public be confident that they've received a legitimate warning and not just a false alarm over one particular system;
- Effective warnings contain all the information people at risk need to evaluate their individual situations and take appropriate action. The essential elements of a warning include the location, timeframe, severity and likelihood of the hazard, along with clear and reliable information about the source of the warning and what people at risk can do to protect themselves; and,
- Warnings need to go to the people at risk and not to people who aren't affected; in other words, effective warnings are "targeted" to the right people at the right time.
The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is a standard digital format for expressing the essential content of effective warning messages, regardless of the technology by which they'll be delivered. A single CAP message can be used to trigger sirens, the Emergency Alert System, Weather Radios, telephone notification systems and systems for people with special needs such as the deaf and hearing-impaired.
CAP was designed during 2001 and 2001 by an international ad-hoc Working Group of emergency managers and technology experts, based on a study on "Effective Disaster Warnings" published in late 2000 by the National Science and Technology Council's Subcommitee on Disaster Reduction. After a number of field trials and demonstrations in various parts of the U.S., CAP 1.0 was adopted as an international standard by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Systems (OASIS) in April 2004. An updated CAP 1.1 specification was adopted in October 2005.
The Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL)
Based on the success of CAP, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the emergency preparedness and response branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formed a partnership with industry members of the Emergency Interoperabilty Consortium (EIC) to develop an expanded family of data formats for exchanging operational information beyond warning.
The Emergency Digital Exchange Language (EDXL) is intended as an "umbrella" for a number of emergency data message types including resource queries and requests, situation status and forecasts, financial and personnel data, message routing instructions and the like. Although the development of CAP had a headstart on EDXL and is continuing on its own track, at an appropriate time in the future CAP is likely to become another part of the larger EDXL framework.
Requirements for EDXL are being developed by a Standards Working Group convened by FEMA and supported by the EIC. Technical refinement, internationalization and standard formalization is being done within the same OASIS technical committee that produced CAP. EDXL is a component project within the National Information Exchange Model (see below).
The Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM)
One key to interoperabilty is a shared set of definitions for key terms. Although words like "person" and "incident" may seem clear enough, in the precise world of computers even small differences in definitions can have serious consequences.
The Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM) is an XML standard designed specifically for criminal justice information exchanges, providing law enforcement, public safety agencies, prosecutors, public defenders, and the judicial branch with a tool to effectively share data and information in a timely manner.
Since its first prerelease in April 2003, the Global JXDM has continued to undergo intensive reviews, receive feedback and error reports online from the public, and provide a GJXDM Listserv discussion forum for sharing expertise and support. Today, more than 50 law enforcement and justice-related projects have been implemented utilizing the GJXDM, further demonstrating the flexibility and stability of the GJXDM.
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)
The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) is 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 GJXDM.
NIEM is designed to:
- Facilitate growth of data model through harmonization of new data components.
- Coordinate independent project teams within DOJ and DHS.
- Separate core entities and attributes from domain specific.
- Produce multiple modular schemas (universal core, community-of-interest core, and domain specific).
- Facilitate discovery of reusable data components.
- Facilitate assembly of reusable exchange packages.
- Adopt a standard for assigning context.
- Maintain compatibility with Global JXDM for future work.
- Demonstrate use of core in federated query.
- Coordinate joint development and joint governanc
IEEE 1512®
With the increase of travel throughout the United States and beyond, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are vital to ensuring safety, protecting environment and relieving traffic congestion. Working in cooperation with the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) is developing a family of standards known as 1512®.
The IEEE 1512® family of standards are incident management and traffic incident related message sets. They provide incident management message sets common to traffic management, public safety, and hazardous materials incident response activities. Traffic incident management consists of managing available resources of various disciplines to mitigate an incident in an efficient and appropriate manner. Therefore a standard message sets will reduce the duplication of messages among various organizations and will help providers or services to interact more effectively and efficiently.
The IEEE 1512® family of standards include:
- IEEE 1512® - 2000 (Common Incident Management Message Sets for Use by Emergency Management Centers)
- IEEE 1512.1® - 2003 (Traffic Management)
- IEEE 1512.2® - 2004 (Public Safety)
- IEEE 1512.3® - 2002 (Hazardous Materials)
- IEEE P1512.4 - (Entities External to Centers)
("IEEE 1512" and its variants are registered trademarks of the IEEE.)
