This was the main theme of the two-day international workshop on
Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) held at the Asian Institute of
Technology (AIT) on 23-24 August 2016. Organized jointly by AIT and the
Sahana Software Foundation, the workshop had 80 experts hailing from 20
countries participating in the event. Co-sponsored by International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC),
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), OASIS Emergency
Management, and World Meteorological Organization (WMO), this was the
ninth such workshop to be organized on CAP.
Welcoming the participants, Mr. Surendra Shrestha, AIT’s Vice
President for Development, stated that AIT is following a holistic
integrated approach towards global issues, and it is actively engaged
with issues like climate change, sustainability and the impact of
urbanization.
Mr. Omar Abou-Samra of IFRC’s Global Disaster Preparedness Center
(GDPC) mentioned that the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) was a key
component in their strategy to save lives. Ms. Elysa Jones, who is the
Chair of the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee, stressed
the need to maintain common data standards including message
distribution and resource messaging.
Mr. Devin Balkind, President, Sahana Software Foundation, spoke about
applying FLO methodologies to civic challenges by developing and
deploying software tools and operational techniques.
Samuel Muchemi of Public Weather Services (SO/PWS), WMO mentioned the
commitment of governments in promoting CAP. “When 192 member countries
pass a resolution to adopt a standard, then it automatically gets
traction,” he remarked. Samuel highlighted the role played by WMO in
advocacy, stating that they were using the Public Private Partnership
model to promote CAP. He also elaborated on the role of the World
Weather Information Service and the Severe Weather Information
Centre.
Eliot Christian, former chief architect of the WMO Information System
and the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS), shared his
experience on promoting CAP during the past 15 years. Nuwan
Waidyanatha,Director, Sahana Software Foundation Board, presented
lessons learnt from the Sahana Alerting and Messaging system. Universal
application progress, shared ownership model, no cost to national
societies adopting CAP, first aid and multi-hazard applications were
among the highlights of the presentation.
According to Dr. Manzul Hazarika, Director (Program Operations),
Geoinformatics Center, AIT, participants came from both international
organizations, governments, as well as the non-governmental and the
private sector. Over 30 presentations were delivered at the two-day
conference with the main objective being to enable countries in
Asia-Pacific to manage situational awareness. Participants came from
Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, French Polynesia, Switzerland, Germany,
Indonesia, Italy, Laos, Maldives, Mexico, Myanmar, Philippines, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, USA and Vietnam.
