[sbe-eas] Subject: Re: PEP Stations

[Richard Rudman]

Chip, Steve and everyone - Patience, patience, patience.... 

We have not yet begun to see the impact that the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) will make on improving public warnings -- and be an integral part of new personal devices to make those warnings truly effective.

 Please remember that when the Partnership for Public Warning (PPW) conceived the CAP, we knew the reasons that SAME didn't foster what could be called "warning appliances". Short answer: SAME was proprietary, did not convey enough critical warning information, was not secure, and was not vetted as a recognized standard by a credible respected source.

Due largely to the efforts of Art Botterell, one of my PPW colleagues, CAP was submitted to the OASIS standards setting organization and has become, thanks to OASIS, not just a standard here in the USA, but an international standard.

CAP has gone international and the proof that it is taking hold was a Global CAP Implementer's Workshop held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2008.
So, what can we expect?

 I predict that there will be a push to include CAP awareness in the next generation of cable head end and set top boxes. I also know of at least one entrepreneur planning what can best be described as personal and home CAP devices. If the FCC is listening to us, they should seriously consider a rulemaking that will mate CAP with a wide variety of receivers. The FCC has mandated receiver standards in the past to foster various new technologies. Why not do this for CAP to help save lives and property? Such devices could, among other things, assure that there are ways to trigger warnings for sight or hearing impaired people, display warnings without interrupting program streams, and, if users tell them to, wake them up at 3 AM when bad things happen. Yes. CAP can be used to trigger sirens, too.

 What do we need to do to better insure this will happen sooner? 

 * Help build solid partnerships with local and state emergency management to get a lot more warning centers to use CAP. The recent announcement by FEMA of IS247 training is a simple prerequisite for warning centers to become certified to send local CAP warnings through the Federal aggregator. 

* Another part of the equation: getting more broadcasters and cable systems to volunteer to run a select number of life safety EAS event codes.

* We need to foster meaningful reinforcement of internet distribution for CAP messaging to broadcast and cable entry points, including wireless means.

* We need to foster launching of more state CAP "push" servers to add to the excellent start in states like Washington

 * We need to tell the FCC that they must authorize EAS Text To Speech (TTS) now, not some time in the future. 

If you are interesting in where notice of the EAS initiatives I am working on is posted, please contact me off list.

 

Richard Rudman

CA SECC Vice Chair

Former Trustee, PPW

Former Chair, EAS National Advisory Committee

SBE President, 1985-87

rar01 at mac.com

 

 

On Feb 10, 2012, at 10:43 PM, Stephen Weber wrote:

Maybe we should return to using air raid sirens in every neighborhood.  I grew up with those; they did work to get attention...

 

Steve

 
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