Dear colleagues

For your information on this upcoming workshop. It will take place during our next SG 16, but maybe some colleague of yours may be interested in attending.

Best regards,

Simão

_____________________________________________
From: Euchner, Martin
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 10:58 PM
To: t09sg17q4@lists.itu.int; Euchner, Martin
Subject: Emergency Alerting Policy Workshop, 1-2 May 2012 in Montreal, Canada

FYI: This forthcoming Emergency Alerting policy workshop is co-sponsored by ITU. Interested SG 17 members are kindly invited to consider their attendance.

A separate Circular Letter is planned to be issued later, providing additional logistical information.

Further information on this workshop can be found at

http://events.oasis-open.org/home/cap/2012

With kind regards

Martin Euchner.

Advisor of Study Group 17

Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB)

International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

e-mail : Martin.Euchner@itu.int
Phone : +41 22 730 5866

Mobile: +41 79 592 4688

URL : http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com17
Office No : M.415

Place des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland

The Emergency Alerting Policy Workshop will take place on May 1-2 2012 in Montreal, Canada, hosted by Environment Canada and other Canadian Public Service organizations.
The Workshop is organized by Environment Canada, other Canadian agencies, OASIS and ITU. OASIS is the global information standards consortium that originally developed the Common Alerting Protocol [CAP]. The CAP is an OASIS standard that is a simple but general format for exchanging all-hazard emergency alerts over all kinds of networks. CAP is adopted as Recommendation ITU-T X.1303.
Within OASIS, the Workshop is being organized jointly by the eGovernment Member Section and by the Emergency Interoperability Member Section.

Policy issues regarding coordination between or among local, regional and global jurisdictions are increasingly relevant in Emergency Alerting.  Earthquakes, tsunami, tornadoes, chemical releases and infectious diseases, etc. do not respect jurisdictional boundaries.  So the question has to be asked “What are the lessons that have been learnt and can we identify best practice?”

The Workshop will take place in English; some limited interpretation facilities into French will be available.

The Workshop is intended to build awareness of policy-related issues and the best practices for dealing with them. We want everyone to come prepared to make a presentation, however brief, to share experience and to contribute to the overall discussion and conclusions.

Please look at the following links that should take you to what will be the announcements on the OASIS web page

http://events.oasis-open.org/home/cap/2012/fr -- French version

http://events.oasis-open.org/home/cap/2012 - English version

About the Workshop

A workshop exploring domestic policy and international coordination issues with public alerting and how they are being addressed within implementations worldwide of the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard.

Learn more...

View Website in French

French Translation Services Available

All workshop sessions will be presented in English. During the workshop, Environment Canada will be offering on-site audio translation services into French. To help us plan for this service, please contact the organization committee by 1 April and we will do everything to ensure all requests for this service can be accommodated.

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The Common Alerting Protocol [CAP] is an OASIS standard that is a simple but general format for exchanging all-hazard emergency alerts over all kinds of networks. CAP allows an alert message to be disseminated consistently and simultaneously over many different warning systems, thus increasing alerting effectiveness while simplifying the task. CAP also facilitates the detection of emerging patterns in local warnings of various kinds, such as might indicate an undetected hazard or hostile act. Furthermore, CAP provides a template for effective alerting messages based on best practices identified in academic research and real-world experience. The CAP standard works well as a simple data transfer standard. It has been adopted by the ITU-T as Recommendation X.1303, and is recommended by the World Bank and other international agencies.

The technical work regarding the CAP is being done very well in other forums, as was demonstrated at the WMO CAP Workshop in Geneva in April 2011, but there are policy issues that make it worthwhile to organize a Workshop addressing the “business” side of public alerting. In most countries, implementing the CAP raises significant issues of organizational jurisdiction, e.g. which department or ministry is responsible for what kind of alerts; how do the agencies responsible for weather coordinate their alerts with the agencies dealing with fires or with earthquakes; what happens in more federally organized countries where varied situations exist at the central level and at the level of constituent states/regions; what role do Environmental Authorities play and is the role consistent; how are global threats managed, e.g. cyber space, solar weather situations etc?

Policy issues regarding coordination between or among local, regional and global jurisdictions are increasingly relevant. Earthquakes, tsunami, tornadoes, chemical releases and infectious diseases, etc. do not respect jurisdictional boundaries. So the question has to be asked “What are the lessons that have been learnt and can we identify best practice?”

<Workshop Goals>

• To produce a vendor-neutral forum to identify and discuss the government policy aspects of alerting, and the challenges of emergency management; with respect to the CAP Standard that makes it possible for jurisdictions involved with these concerns, to exchange such information on the national, cross-border and global scales.
• To foster growth and open communication in a community of like minded organizations that identify to the recognized need for interoperability between systems and countries.
• To identify policy-related issues and resulting good practices that could be formalized using the OASIS processes.

<Target Audience>

Professionals responsible for developing, influencing and managing policy for alerting from public, private, academic and global institutional sectors should consider attending, including: policy-makers, CIOs, emergency managers, leaders, technical strategists working on the latest leading-edge developments, concepts, theory, and applications

<Workshop Format>

The workshop plans to limit attendance to about 80 individuals, with priority given to individuals or groups:

• eager to participate in the workshop discussions
• representing current implementations that have dealt with policy issues in their alerting systems
• that are developing new systems and are wrestling with these issues
• and/or that have alerting activities across international borders.

The organizing committee will also provide a short list of common policy issues in advance to help participants consider their positions prior to arriving.

To avoid any ambiguity and misunderstanding, “government policy” in the context of this workshop is taken to mean the following: “The course of direction or action taken by Ministers and/or Senior Officials in government organizations. The policy may be embodied in constitutions, legislative acts, and judicial decisions but equally could be just a published statement on for example a public sector website. The policy will generally set the direction from a business/operational perspective and will not detail the specifics of implementation or technical solutions.”