Resolution on Standards for Public Warning to be Drafted for ITU Action
GENEVA -- National delegates will draft a resolution on a common alerting protocol (CAP) for public warning systems, and on the wider issue of information and communication technology standards for public warning, they agreed here last week. The resolution will go to ITU member countries to consider at a Nov. policy-making conference.
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OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is expected in Feb. to submit the alert protocol to the ITU for international standardization, with a vote by ITU members possible in Sept., officials said. “OASIS and ITU would specifically look at a path moving forward to take CAP and integrate it into the ITU in some form,” said Elysa Jones of Warning Systems, chmn. of the OASIS emergency management technical committee.
CAP is really a message format, said Ken Smith of Verizon, reporting member for ITU-T study group (SG) 2, ITU’s lead SG for telecom disaster relief and early warning. An aim would be to turn it into a real computer-to-computer protocol interface to allow systems to interconnect, Smith said. Which part of ITU-T will handle the work isn’t decided, officials said. The specification needs work before it can be weighed for approval, but could be done by Sept., when the ITU SG most likely to work on the issue next meets, officials said.
The question is how much work is needed before it could be ready for a vote, said Smith. The idea now is that CAP 1.1 could go to ITU-T’s lead SG on telecom management at a Feb. 5-14 meeting, then readied for a vote during an Aug. 28-Sept. 7, 2007, meeting.
Concerns such as the need for more international cooperation were raised at last week’s meeting (CD Oct 20 p6). “The Warning Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act inherently necessitates substantial international cooperation,” said Tony Rutkowksi, vp-regulatory affairs & infrastructure standards at VeriSign: “The current level of international cooperation on emergency alerting should be enhanced, he said: “It would be good if the new U.S. Federal Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee would proactively establish international activities including an ongoing liaison with emergency alert bodies worldwide.”
Solutions for jurisdictional cooperation are key, said Chip Hines, program mgr., the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security Disaster Management eGov Initiative. More user community engagement will help identify requirements in any solution, he said.
Notably absent from the meeting were delegates from China and Japan, Nabil Kisrawi, Syrian representative to the ITU, said: “We hope that they will join efforts and not come up with their own standard.”
A draft resolution on ICT standards for public warning is to be drafted for ITU members to consider at ITU’s Nov. 6- 24 principal policy-making conference, national delegates to the ITU agreed. Emergency telecom is integral to disaster management, said Cosmas Zavazava, head of ITU’s least developed countries unit. Those nations and small island developing states are the most vulnerable to disaster, he said: “They are very interested in a common protocol, in a harmonized approach to disaster management.” A capacity building framework will be established through training to disseminate information and implement any agreed resolutions, officials said.
An ad hoc meeting on cell broadcast harmonization by the Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Association agreed: (1) A global harmonized channel scheme for civil purposes should be developed via the appropriate international standards bodies. (2) A Wis. trial system should be harmonized with the EU trial system in Holland, with channel 920 as the interim public warning channel, said Mark Wood of the Cellular Emergency Alert Systems Assn.