NOAA National Weather Service

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NOAANational Weather Service

• Robert Bunge
• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Robert.Bunge_at_noaa.gov

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NWS CAP

• Common Alerting Protocol
• Lower cost of entry to use mission critical NWS
  text products
• Integration with GIS technologies
• Enhanced message update and cancellation features
• Multi-lingual and multi-audience messaging
• How NWS Uses CAP (http//www.weather.gov/alerts
  -beta)
• Hurricane/Tropical Cyclones
• Severe Weather
• Tsunami Warnings
• Winter Weather
• Wind Heat Events
• Non-Weather (HazCollect)

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Brief History

• Built and deployed CAP 1.0 feeds in 2004
• http//www.weather.gov/alerts/
• Built by parsing WMO/text messages
• With parallel HTML and RSS feeds
• State and county (2006) feeds
• Single CAP message contains all alerts
• Well accepted, widely used, but calls for more
  fine grained parsing
• Started CAP 1.1 effort in 2007
• http//www.weather.gov/alerts-beta/
• Created a cross Weather Enterprise working group
• Held regular meetings to review prototypes
• Each CAP message is a unique URI
• State/County ATOM indexes, HTML replaced by style
  sheets
• Plan to replace CAP 1.0 in December and go
  operational
• Will serve as a template for future AWIPS
  produced messages

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Approach

• Past and on-going tasks
• Enhance the current experimental web-based CAP
  beta feeds
• Started in Spring 2009 populating Instruction
  element
• Populate additional CAP elements
• Better quality control
• Future tasks (2010-2012)
• CAP Push streams
• XMPP
• Centrally generate CAP messages in WMO "envelope"
  and disseminate via traditional NWS push
  dissemination systems
• Generate native CAP using Next Generation Warning
  Tool with mixed case, expanded character set, and
  fully populated CAP elements
• Generate WMO-formatted product and CAP message
• Continue to disseminate both versions

Engage Partners
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• HazCollect Mission
• HazCollect Description

Haz
Collect
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HazCollectAll-Hazards Emergency Message
Collection System

• Mission NOAA/NWS is assigned responsibility by
  the National Response Framework to provide
  public dissemination of critical pre- and
  post-event information on NOAA Weather Radio All
  Hazards (NWR) and other dissemination systems.
• Provides tools to emergency responders and
  government officials for efficient distribution
  of alert and warning information to affected
  population in the event of an emergency.
• Message Examples Hazardous Materials Warning,
  Fire Warning, Evacuation Warning,
  Shelter-in-Place Warning, Amber Alert, Nuclear
  Power Plant Warning, Civil Emergency Message
• Enables wider distribution of Non-Weather
  Emergency Messages to
• NWS dissemination systems including NOAA Weather
  Radio and NOAA Weather Wire Service, Emergency
  Managers Weather Information Network (EMWIN)
• Emergency Alert System (EAS)
• Weather enterprise, news media, and others that
  monitor and distribute NWS data streams

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HazCollect Description

• HazCollect is a nationwide capability developed
  by NWS in coordination with Department of
  Homeland Securitys (DHS) Federal Emergency
  Management Agency (FEMA).
• Warning authorities create messages on a
  FEMA-managed application or a third-party
  CAP-compliant NWEM authoring tool
• FEMA Disaster Management interoperability
  platform authenticates users and provides message
  interoperability amongst parties
• Distribution of Non-Weather Emergency Messages
  (NWEMs) through NWS dissemination systems