World Standards Aim to Boost Disaster, Civic Messaging by Governments

The protocol is an all-media emergency alerting and public warning standard for weather events, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, public health crises, power outages, and other emergencies that would be distributed by cellphones, faxes, radio, TV, and the Internet. The FCC requires that communications providers in the U.S. use the protocol.

A World Meteorological Organization workshop this month will discuss possible CAP name space structure and registration authorities, said Tony Rutkowski of Yaana Technologies (CD May 18 p5) (WID May 18 p2). The name space would identify CAP messages, which authority is sending them and the associated policies, Rutkowski said.

Eliot Christian of the organization will ask an ITU member to propose a “root certificate authority” for CAP alerts, the preliminary workshop agenda said. WMO staff will consult on a MeteoAlarm plan by 25 European countries to support the protocol, the agenda said. Elysa Jones will ask the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards’ Emergency Management Technical Committee to consider preparing a white paper on globally unique identifiers for the alerts, it said.

Address space for broadcasting disaster relief and early warning alerts to the public is crucial to rollout, said an ITU-T submission to the workshop. The address space would be in commercial mobile point-to-multipoint, multicast or broadcast bearer services, the submission said. Follow- through on the protocol will need support from GSM, UMTS, CDMA and others, the submission said. The message identifiers “sender” and “source” can be mapped in various ways in different technologies, the ITU-T submission said. The identifiers “sender,” “source” and “language” may need global harmonization, the submission said.

A draft ITU-T recommendation has requirements for land mobile alerting broadcast capabilities for point-to- multipoint, multicast and broadcast warning and civic use, the submission said. Commercial mobile services are crucial for the rollout of warning messaging capabilities, informing the public and international roaming, the draft recommendation said. The draft proposes a set of capabilities for broadcasting alerts to subscribers of commercial mobile services. Mobile terminals should make a special alert tone resembling an alert siren, the draft said. Alerts could be based on severity, certainty, and urgency, depending on national requirements, it said.

Transmission of “advisory” messages for less urgent civic communications should conform to national regulatory requirements and operator preferences, the draft said. Subscribers should be able to opt in or out of civic messages, it said. Civic alert tones should be less obtrusive, the draft said.

Communications may also be directed to “closed user groups” of specialists, the draft text said. Warning and informing the public is strictly a national matter, the draft said. Some situations may require the same address for all countries, the draft said, mentioning boat skippers. First responders or other specialized personnel may need closed user group communications, the draft text said. An international agency may provide requested messages to administrations, the draft said. The country would then decide whether to transmit to the closed user group and would control membership, the draft said.

Participants at a May WMO meeting agreed to set up a worldwide register of warning authorities, a workshop document said. The register is a step toward achieving a “single official voice for dissemination of warnings,” a priority for WMO member countries, the document said. The register will contain country, organization and geographic scope of the alerting authority and the types of messages it’s authorized to send, it said. It will also include the URL where the alerting authority serves its alert messages, it said. Countries were asked for further comment.