WSIS Forum 2023: The International Standard Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and the UN Action Plan on Early Warnings for All
March 13 @ 15:00 CET
The goal of the UN Action Plan on Early Warnings for All is to ensure that every person on Earth is protected by an early warning system in the next five years. This an expansive vision and a huge undertaking with implications on many aspects of ICTs worldwide. It is also a crucial and life-critical aspect of the world’s Information Society.
One of the four Pillars of the UN Action Plan concerns Warning Communication and Dissemination. One of its two Outcomes is: “All countries have the capability for effective, authoritative emergency alerting that leverages the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), suitable for all media and all hazards.”
CAP, ITU standard X.1303, is used for all types of hazards: hurricanes and other severe weather, floods, tsunami, earthquakes, volcanoes, fires, oil spills, chemical spills, disease, public safety, and so on.
CAP leverages all manner of ICTs–the infrastructure for public alerting of emergencies. This includes broadcast radio and television, mobile networks, satellite broadcast, navigation systems, websites, social media, push notifications, networked sirens, highway signs, automated safety devices, and much more.
CAP is widely adopted but not yet universal. Today, 82% of the world’s population lives in a country with at least one national-level CAP alert news feed operational.
The UN Action Plan asserts a specific action to “Establish CAP editor and Alert Hub to further enhance multi-hazard CAP based emergency alerting”. The free Alert Hub service now aggregates emergency alerts from 199 CAP alert feeds, published by 131 countries/territories and other sources. The cloud-based CAP Editor freeware service is now in operational use by 53 countries/territories that publish 96 of those 199 CAP alert feeds. Both CAP Editor and Alert Hub are provided by Alert-Hub .Org CIC, and both will be demonstrated in this workshop.
The speaker at this workshop is the CEO of Alert-Hub. Org. He is one of the authors of the CAP standard, and has 20+ years of experience with implementing CAP in countries all over the world. He consults regularly with ITU, IFRC, UNDRR, WMO, and many other governmental and commercial organizations worldwide.
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