Call for Participation:
GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot
This Call for Participation seeks proposals from organizations involved with Earth Observation systems to:
• Identify components with services,
e.g., portals, catalogs and other services;
• Participate in confirming the interoperability
of those identified services using standards and
interoperability arrangements as identified in
the preliminary architecture of this CFP; and,
• Participate in the collaborative development
of societal benefit scenarios to guide testing
and demonstrations of the identified
interoperable services.

GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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Offered Component: Standardized alert messages for many kinds of natural hazards are offered by operational and pilot services operated by the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS) and the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS), among others. These services are part of the implementation in societies worldwide of all-hazards, all-media public warning based on the international standard Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).
Benefits for GEO: Early detection of natural hazards is enhanced through Earth
Observations, but actual protection of life and property requires hazard event information to be combined with instructions and disseminated as public warnings.
Although issuance of warnings is always handled by local authorities, the GEO community is uniquely positioned across all types of natural hazards to enable threat information to be available in a standard format. Having alerts in the CAP format allows alerting authorities to disseminate information using all available media--sirens, telephones, fax, news wires, television, radio, satellite broadcasting, Internet, etc.
Current Status: Using the CAP standard, societies are beginning to implement the next generation of public warning systems, making progress toward the goal to reach everyone at risk, wherever they are and whenever the event occurs. Specifically designed to make public warnings "all media" and "all hazards", the CAP standard responds to the realization by governments, emergency managers, and providers of information and communications technology that it makes no sense to continue building separate public warning systems for each type of hazard and communications medium.
CAP alerts for earthquakes worldwide and for volcanoes in the United States are available now on operational services from the USGS, while tsunamis, severe weather, child abductions, and some other types of CAP alerts are available on an experimental basis from the U.S. National Weather Service. The Hong Kong Observatory, a facility of the World Meteorological Organization, is developing CAP alerts for Tropical Cyclone warnings using data from the 20 nations participating in the Severe Weather Information
Center. Canada is moving forward with CAP alerts, and collaborating with the U.S.
Department of Transportation as it deploys CAP alerts in 17 states. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency is also developing CAP alerts for air quality warnings.
Mechanisms for display of CAP alerts are being developed, for example, on the Google
Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth platforms. Reuters AlertNet is an example of a news organization developing CAP alert support mechanisms. Among United Nations organizations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is developing the Global Disaster Alerting and Coordination System through the European Union's
Joint Research Commission. Other CAP examples may be relevant as well.
The International Telecommunication Union is adopting the CAP standard as ITU
Recommendation X.1303. The ITU is also preparing "Guidelines for the Content
Standard of Alerts and Notifications in Disasters and Emergencies" for use by developing nations. This document follows specifically on a 2006 ITU Resolution:
"to promote implementation by appropriate alerting authorities of the international content standard for all-media public warning".
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GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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Offer of Assistance: The USGS proposes to assist participants in this GEOSS
Implementation Pilot to make use of available CAP alert services and/or to establish new CAP alerts services on an experimental basis. Some assistance is available directly from experts within USGS. Otherwise, USGS will facilitate assistance from experts in other organizations involved in CAP implementation or the CAP standard.
2.1 Demonstration Scenario Development
The CAP alert services contribute to the public warning aspects of the existing CFP
Annex B scenarios, as well as any of the interoperability pilot projects that include an emergency management aspect. These include the Wildland Fire Disaster scenario, the Tanker Oil Spill Disaster scenario, the Ecosystems and Biodiversity scenario, and the Floods interoperability pilot.
2.2 Component and Service Contributions
Services Contributed: CAP alerts are implemented as RSS (Real Simple Syndication)
"news feeds" at several Internet locations supported by the USGS and NWS, e.g.:
Earthquakes M > 5 - Last 7 days http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/catalogs/caprss7days5.xml
U.S. Volcano Updates - Last 7 days http://volcano.wr.usgs.gov/cap/rss/vhpcaprss.xml
Watches, Warnings, and Advisories from the U.S. National Weather Service http://www.weather.gov/alerts/
It is recommended that CFP participants use the enhanced aggregator at USGS that aggregates CAP alerts from these sources and is updated every two minutes: http://www.search.gov/cap/rss.xml
This enhanced aggregator passes through only clean and validated data, and it inserts actual polygon coordinates to eliminate the need for downstream applications to resolve
NWS geocoding or otherwise parse for the appropriate area in coordinate form. The enhanced aggregator focuses on events, skipping NWS monitoring reports that do not report a change. The enhanced aggregator also breaks the state-wide NWS CAP alerts into individual CAP alerts for each specific alert situation.
A search service is available on an accumulated collection of CAP alerts posted via the enhanced aggregator. The search service interface is ISO 23950, GEO Profile, with records returned as CAP alerts in XML, accepting both ASN.1 (port 210) and
SRU (port 80). Here is an example SRU search request for alerts since 1 May 2007 overlapping the area bounded north at 38, west at -123, south at 35, and east at -117: http://staging.google.neopolitan.com/cgi-bin/usgs/query.php?operation=searchRetrieve&
version=1.1&maximumRecords=100&recordSchema=XML&query=
(geo.timeperiod > /isoDate "20070501")and(geo.bounds within/partial/nwse "38 -123 35 -117")
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GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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Performance capability of the Components: The RSS services referenced above are capable of handling routine testing of capabilities, with hit frequency measured in seconds or longer. High-performance geospatial searching of CAP alerts should make use of the enhanced aggregator and the ISO 23950 search service supported by Neopolitan Networks on a "farm" of Web servers supplemented with high-speed telecommunications and specialized geospatial search performance characteristics.
Availability of the components: The services from USGS and NWS are continuously available now and are expected to continue into the foreseeable future. The Neopolitan high-performance search service should be available at least through December 2007.
2.3 Architecture and Standards
The CAP standard is maintained by the Emergency Management Technical Committee of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).
The CAP OASIS standard is being adopted as ITU Recommendation X.1303 as well.
Accordingly, it supports the GEOSS principle that "GEOSS system components are to be interfaced with each other through interoperability specifications based on open, international standards". Use of the CAP standard also supports the GEOSS principle that "GEOSS implementation will facilitate [...] recording and storage in clearly defined formats, with metadata and quality indications to enable search, retrieval, and archiving as accessible data sets."
The CAP standard makes use of both the XML and the ASN.1 mechanisms for defining data syntax. This is in keeping with the GEOSS principle that "Systems interoperating in
GEOSS agree to avoid non-standard data syntaxes in favor of well-known and precisely defined syntaxes for data traversing system interfaces." Within the CAP standard, the semantics of data elements are defined using ISO/IEC 11179, Information Technology--
Metadata Registries, as encouraged by the GEOSS principle "to register the semantics of shared data elements so that any system designer can determine in a precise way the exact meaning of data occurring at service interfaces between components."
Two interface standards are referenced here: the ISO 23950 search (request/response) service, and the RSS news feed (publish/subscribe) service. These are both open, international standard services and further support the GEOSS principle that
"interoperability arrangements are to be based on the view of complex systems as assemblies of components that interoperate primarily by passing structured messages over network communication services."
The ISO 23950 service exemplifies the principle that "GEOSS service definitions are to specify precisely the syntax and semantics of all data elements exchanged at the service interface, and fully describe how systems interact at the interface." The service definition of ISO 23950 is available as a Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) and as an OSI "application service definition and protocol specification". The syntax of data elements exchanged at the ISO 23950 service are defined with both ASN.1 and XML.
The semantics of all data elements are defined using the guidelines of ISO/IEC 11179.
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GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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2.4 Rationale for the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
The point of public warning is that people can take actions to reduce the damage and loss of life caused by natural and man-made hazard events. This involves getting timely and appropriate alerts to everyone who needs them and to only those who need them.
To do so effectively and efficiently, it is important to pursue an all-media, all-hazards public warning strategy. The CAP standard is designed to enable that strategy.
Rather than being defined for a particular communications technology, CAP is essentially a "content standard": a digital message format that can be applied to any type of alert, across existing and emerging alert systems and sensor technologies.
In this way, CAP is compatible with all kinds of information systems and public alerting systems. This characteristic is especially important as societies are certainly not invested solely in any specific technology, but are expanding into ever more versatile networks and applications and so improving overall redundancy and reliability.
The targeting of warnings can be more precise with CAP. Because of the encoded data within the message, CAP messages can be automatically filtered and routed to different target audiences or individuals. Every CAP message includes an encoded classification by event category and by urgency, severity, and certainty. CAP messages can also include standardized geospatial information that is essential for delivering messages to the right target audiences. Location-aware receiving devices can exploit this data to determine whether a CAP message is relevant, given the current location of the device.
A benefit of CAP for sending alert messages is that the sender can activate multiple warning systems with a single input. Using a single input reduces cost and avoids the complex task of notifying many warning systems. Operational systems have already shown that a single authoritative and secure CAP alert message can quickly launch
Internet messages, news feeds, television text captions, highway sign messages, sirens, and synthesized voice over automated telephone calls and radio broadcasts.
The single input message feature of CAP-based systems ensures consistency in the information delivered over multiple systems. It is very important that people receive exact corroboration of a warning through multiple channels, as research has found that people do not typically act on the first warning signal. Rather, they look for confirmation and only act when convinced that the warning is not a false alarm.
A further benefit of CAP for emergency management is that standardized warnings from various sources can be compiled in tabular or graphical form as an aid to situational awareness and pattern detection. Where CAP is applied extensively, managers are able to monitor at any one time the whole picture of local, regional, and national warnings of all types. It is also the case that CAP alert messages can be used at sensor systems as a format for direct reporting of relevant events to collection and analysis centers.
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GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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2.5 Content of CAP Alert Messages
Effective warning systems need to reach everyone who is at risk, wherever they are and whenever the event occurs, yet must not alarm people unnecessarily. Systems must be easy to use, reliable and secure. An effective warning message delivered by such a system must be accurate, specific, and action-oriented. And, warning messages must be understandable in terms of languages and special needs, with attention to the prior knowledge and experience of the receivers. It is also critical that times, places, and instructions are easily understood. Accordingly, the information elements within a CAP message are designed to convey information about the alert message, information on the specific hazard event, and instructions for appropriate actions people should take.
Each CAP message includes information that describes the message itself. Messages have unique identification numbers, and may reference other, related CAP messages.
Identifying information about the message also includes the status and time sent, allowing messages to serve as updates and cancellations of previous messages.
Messages are identified by source, and are compatible with digital encryption and signature techniques that ensure the reliability and security of the message.
Information about an event in a CAP message may be contained in multiple informational segments, allowing the message to be transmitted in multiple languages or to multiple audiences. Each informational segment includes a description of the event in terms of its urgency, severity, and certainty. Urgency describes how much time is available to prepare; Severity describes the intensity of the impact; and Certainty is a measure of confidence in the observation or prediction being made. The event may be assigned to a category (e.g., geophysical, meteorological, safety, security, rescue, fire, health, environmental, transportation, infrastructure), and may be described in text as well. CAP also supports including associated digital images and audio. Including an audio message, for example, allows the warning to be broadcast directly on radio, avoiding the necessity to have an announcer read the message "live on air".
2.6 Structure of CAP Alert Messages
The basic XML structure of a CAP message consists of four primary elements (also referred to as segments in the CAP data dictionary) arranged in a hierarchical structure: a root element <alert>, which may contain one or more
<info> elements, each of which may contain one or more
<area> and <resource> elements
Each of the primary elements within the CAP document contains a number of nested elements (referred to as sub-elements in the CAP data dictionary). Each of these sub-elements is defined as a container for text and/or attributes that together provide the specific contents of the alert message. As defined in the CAP data dictionary, some subelements such as <sender> or <msgtype> are “required” while others are “optional” or “conditional.”
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GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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An example CAP message is shown in Figure 1 (right).
The <alert> segment contains subelements that provide fundamental information about the message, including the sender, the time it was issued, the status of the message
(e.g., actual, exercise, test), the type of message (e.g., alert, update, cancellation), as well as the intended distribution of the message
(e.g., public, restricted).
Each <info> segment contains subelements to provide further details for the message. These include its urgency, severity and certainty; instructions for appropriate response by recipients, the nature of the hazard event, and other details including a <description> sub-element that contains a human readable text description of the hazard or event.
Figure 1.
Example CAP Message
Multiple <info> segments may be used to describe details in different languages, or to enable emergency managers to issue a single alert with different parameters such as intensity bands or probability factors for different geographical areas.
Each <resource> segment is an optional reference that contains sub-elements with additional information related to the <info> segment within which it appears. Typically these resources will take the form of an image or audio file, such as a map, photo, website, or a recorded spoken word description of the message. The <resourceDesc> subelement provides a human readable description of the resource (e.g., “map of evacuation routes”), while other sub-elements may be included to describe the specific file type, the file size, or the hyperlink location for retrieving the file from the Internet if it does not accompany the message itself.
Each <area> segment is an optional reference that describes the geographic coverage for the specific <info> segment in which it appears. The values describing the geographic area must include a human readable text description using the <areaDesc> subelement (e.g., “Coastal regions of Sumatra”), but may also include recognized geocodes (e.g., postal code regions) or geospatial shapes using the <polygon> or
<circle> sub-elements. Other sub-elements include descriptions for altitude and ceiling.
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GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot: Standards-based, All-Hazards, All-Media Public Warning
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2.7 GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas Supported
All-hazards, all-media public warning applies to all of the GEO societal benefit areas except Climate, i.e., Disasters (alerts on natural and man-made hazards); Agriculture
(alerts on disease, pests, drought), Biodiversity (alerts on invasive species);
Ecosystems (alerts on oil spills, algal blooms); Energy (alerts on power infrastructure, geomagnetic storms); Health (public health alerts); Water (alerts on floods, droughts, water quality); and, Weather (severe weather alerts).
The GEOSS 10-Year Implementation Plan Reference Document makes a specific reference to the CAP standard (on page 20): "This all-hazard public warning technology could be implemented using the GEOSS architecture that encourages system interfaces using international standards such as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)."
The responding organization is the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a part of the U.S. Federal government and the Department of the Interior. The offered component will be supported by existing U.S. systems, and by USGS personnel.
The Programmatic Contact and the Technical Contact will be the same person:
Eliot Christian
United States Geological Survey
106 National Center
Reston VA 20192 email: echristian@usgs.gov cell: +1 571-212-8294
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