OASIS EM TC
The Canadian Association for Public Alerting and
Notification (www.CAPAN.ca) has just posted
the following documents to its website:
1. Canadian
Profile of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP-CP) Introduction and Rule Set Beta
0.3
2. Canadian
Profile of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP-CP) Location References Beta 0.3
3. Canadian
Profile of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP-CP) Event References Beta 0.3
4. CAPAN
CAP Event Location Layer PUBLIC DRAFT
The CAP-CP was split into three documents, as we plan to
manage the updates to each independently of the others. They are identified as
beta in anticipation of Canadian standards organization involvement, which
would produce an official version 1. These documents are currently overseen by
a limited number of stakeholders that include Jacob Westfall and I, and federal
agencies. Our next steps include the addition of marine area location
references, and the vetting of event references with additional subject matter
experts.
The Event Location layer includes requirements specific to
the addition of point, line, polygon and circle references for alert event
location, using CAP <parameter>. Our primary objective is to support a
common operational picture of CAP-CP alerts using geospatial tools. We
determined that event location was significantly more important than the alert
area, for most visual presentations of CAP alerts.
This layer was to have been identified to CAP-CP, however, given
that CAP-CP offers a managed event list which we can associate symbols with, we
were left with the need to capture event location references only. We hope that
it will have value for others, and other purposes (and perhaps adoption in CAP
2.0).
Our next step in this project is to document best practices
related to the conversion of CAP-CP to GeoRSS, KML, etc., including the impact
of severity on presentation style. Ex. Symbol colour and border style
changes. This project has financial support from GeoConnections, a
federal initiative to advance the use of geomatics in public safety.
In support of the aforementioned, CAPAN has associated a
symbol and URI with each of the CAP-CP event codes, for consumption and use by
feed readers which support remote symbol references. A new provincial
situational awareness system is consuming these symbols and presenting them in
a Microsoft Virtual Earth viewer. I note that the symbols in use are
placeholders for symbols that will be defined in a national public safety
symbology project. To the extent possible, we can expect that project team to
adopt the symbology defined by the US FGDC for use in the US.
We would appreciate your feedback, either directly with me,
or through a discussion forum to be launched soon at www.CAPAN.ca.
Cheers,
Doug Allport
Executive Director
Canadian Association for
Public Alerting and Notification (www.CAPAN.ca)
Doug.Allport@CAPAN.ca
(613) 271-1040