The first release of the New Zealand Common Alerting Protocol Guidelines has been released: This is great news for New Zealand as it provides the first geospatial intelligence for notification of forecast and current hazards. It is used by other counties and we can learn from their approach.
Key Message: If you work in the geospatial industry, this is going to impact you, so follow closely!
Resources
Public Alert and Warning Training Materials - (from the US National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation) In the United States they use a system called IPAWS and it is based on CAP. The data is provided in the standard XML format via a hub and then made available as live, scalable web services in a variety of OGC formats with standardized symbology.
NZ Common Alerting Protocol Guideline - This document is written by the New Zealand CAP Working Group and owned by the ‘Principal Advisor - National Operations, Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM)’. Before using this guideline always email opsteam@dpmc.govt.nz to check you have the latest version.
Version 1.0 is a draft intended to be available for Alerting Authorities and vendors to refer to, but with a number of areas still under development at working group meetings.