The International Telecommunications Union – Disaster (ITU-D) division recruited me to introduce ways in which the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) interoperable emergency communication standard could be operationalized in the Asia Pacific region. The audience comprised member state delegates from their respective telecommunications regulatory authorities and their emergency operations centres (or disaster management centres). The workshop: “Use of Telecomunications/ICT for Disaster Management” took place in Bangkok, Thailand; 20-23 December 2012.

The Sahana CAP- enabled Messaging Broker software was put in to practice to simulate both inter- jurisdictional (between agencies) and intra-jurisdictional (within the agency) as well as direct (from system to human recipient) and cascade (i.e. Agency-A send message to Agency-B’s system, then Agency-B alerts its subscribers) alerting procedures. Enforcing the standard through a software removes the perceived technical complexities; otherwise seen cumbersome for National emergency communication policy-makers to comprehend.

Following the hands-on exercises, the delegates engaged in a SWOT analysis to evaluate their experience with CAP and the CAP-enabled Sahana software; especially, considering the utility and adaptability if they were to  institutionalize it in their own country.

Clik here to read the ITU-D workshop session 8 CAP report

The slides: “Introduction to Operationalizing CAP“