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The White House's Disaster Management Initiative managed by Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
[ What is The White House's Disaster Management Initiative? ]
General Description of the Initiative: To help citizens and members of the emergency management community at the local, tribal, state, and Federal levels by improving public safety response through more effective and efficient interoperable data communications and to serve as a unified point of access to disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery information.
Some of the Progress to Date:
- Released upgraded Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) Web Services Version 2.2 to current user groups. This will enable users to create and send alerts in the Common Alert Protocol (CAP) format in addition to enhancing other features in the toolset.
- DMIS used in 94 actual emergencies and 530 disaster preparedness exercises with 1,415 DMIS user groups in all 50 states as of 08/04/05
- Exchanged 1,400 Common Alert Protocol (CAP) Messages through the DMIS interoperability backbone.
Some Next Steps:
- Assist agencies in deploying the DMIS toolset and in implementing the capability to send and receive alert messages using the CAP standard.
- Continue to support and process requests for State and local deployment of DMIS.
Retrieved from White House's e-Gov website on October 18, 2006
Read more > > http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-2-2-disaster.html
Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS)
What is DMIS? (off-site content)
NeXEO is DMIS-enabled!
NeXEO's Interoperability Test
September 8, 2006 - A formal unscripted demonstration was conducted at the Indiana State EOC to demonstrate NeXEO™'s capability to interoperate with e3 EM, WebEOC, and other NeXEO systems across Indiana. During this test, NeXEO shared incident and resource data and exchanged acknowledgements with the other NeXEO systems and e3 EM by means of CAP messages that were automatically and securely sent over the Web. NeXEO supports the presidential initiative for Disaster Management
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-2-2-disaster.html) by using CAP messages that are securely exchanged using the Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS). Also, NeXEO securely exchanged data with WebEOC using a custom Web client program since WebEOC does not currently support CAP messages and DMIS. IAS met and exceeded all requirements for the test.
September 1, 2006: An interoperability demonstration was conducted in Indiana that involved multiple counties and multiple emergency management software applications automatically and securely exchanging data over the Web. NeXEO-Indiana was used at Benton and Parke counties and the State EOC, e3 EM was used at Vanderburgh County, and WebEOC was used at Marion County.
CAP V1.1 is an OASIS Standard and NeXEO supports it!
[OASIS Website]
What is OASIS? OASIS is the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards.
How is an OASIS Standard approved? OASIS Standards are approved within an OASIS Committee, submitted for public review, implemented by at least three organizations,and finally ratified by the Consortium's membership at-large.
CAP V1.1 was approved by:
- US Department of Defense (DOD),
- Department of the Interior,
- Boeing,
- Oracle,
- IBM,
- HP,
- General Motors, etc
- (see CAP 1.1 voting history)
CAP V1.1 adopted as OASIS Standard on 10/1/2005
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Network eXtensible Emergency Operations, NeXEO Interoperability
Interoperability is the ability of software and hardware on different machines from the same vendor or different vendors to share data. NeXEO can interoperate with other systems using NeXEO, and any other system or software that implements the CAP V1.1 standard. NeXEO can also share data with others who do not implement CAP V1.1 however; this requires a more tightly coupled approach. By adhering to standards such as CAP, NeXEO introduces a loosely coupled software that enables interoperability. [ What does 'coupling' mean? ] There are many levels at which NeXEO can share data or interoperate with other systems.
1. Share issues, incidents, resource offers, resource requests, and other types of data with other users in the same EOC on the same server
2. Share issues, incidents, resource offers, resource requests, and other types of data with other EOCs using NeXEO
3. Share issues, incidents, resource offers, resource requests, and other types of data with other EOCs not using NeXEO
NeXEO CAP V1.1 [ What is CAP V1.1? ] features
- NeXEO proudly supports CAP V1.1!
- NeXEO enables many levels of data sharing between different Emergency Management applications!
- Automatic National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Alerts and radar images layer displayed on application map
- Automatic CAP messages created and sent describing new NeXEO incidents and issues
- If the user in NeXEO enters a new issue or incident and selects the necessary fields, a CAP message will be created and sent using Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS).
- In NeXEO, a data item's 'Support Region' or 'Support Level' determine the level of "sharing" and with whom to share this data.
- The CAP message is sent to the selected agencies determined by their corresponding Collaborative Operations Group (COG) id.
- The creation and sending of CAP messages happens seamlessly in NeXEO.
- It is very easy to get set up with COG ids and IAS will aid in the process. Register now for a COG
- A possible scenario: NeXEO is installed at the state level, one county is using WebEOC, three counties are using e3 EM, and the rest are using NeXEO. A user at the state enters an incident and fills in the data. The user sets the 'Support Region' to 'Statewide' and sets 'Support Level' to 'Advisory'. At this point a CAP message is automatically created with the details about the new incident. The CAP message is configured to be sent to the COG ids of all of the counties in that state. Even if the the county is using another system, a CAP message will still be sent to them. e3 EM already has the capability to display CAP messages in their system.
CAP-enabled system = A CAP V1.1 enabled system including but not limited to e3 EM
- CAP messages from NeXEO systems and CAP-enabled systems automatically create NeXEO incidents and issues
- A CAP message from a NeXEO system or a different CAP-enabled system is imported and turned into an appropriate data item.
- Newly imported data items look and behave just like original data in the local NeXEO system.
- Imported data items are tagged with a source and some other information about the CAP message and special functions can be performed on them with regards to acknowledgements (more on this below).
- A possible scenario: NeXEO receives a CAP message from an e3 EM system and maps the data to a new NeXEO incident. NeXEO signals that new data has been imported by turning certain elements red on each user's screen. The NeXEO user can click to view the new data. Visually, the user can determine the source of this data. They can respond appropriately without using email or phone communications.
- NeXEO facilitates support needs, support needs acknowledgements, and other resource communications between NeXEO systems and other CAP-enabled systems
- A NeXEO system gets a CAP message from either another NeXEO system or a CAP-enabled system and it becomes an actual data item.
- Inside NeXEO, there is an option of replying to the external support need or resources request.
- The CAP acknowledgement to an original CAP message or update is sent automatically by NeXEO.
- The CAP acknowledgement either arrives in a NeXEO system or in CAP-enabled system
- NeXEO support a "chat-like" mechanism for CAP acknowledgements and are represented clearly in the details for the original CAP message that became a regular NeXEO data item.
- A possible scenario: State shares data with all counties. County 1 responds to state fulfilling half of the request. State receives visual clue about request response from county 1 and then responds back to county 1 with details about delivery. Meanwhile, county 2 responds back to state and says they cannot give what the state has requested. State responds back to county 2 with a "thanks anyway". All of this communication is accomplished seamlessly using CAP messages.
- Handles CAP message updates for data that has been imported from other CAP-enabled systems or other NeXEO systems
- NeXEO receives a CAP message and uses a reference number to find the original data item created from the original CAP message. It updates the data item with any changes specified in the CAP message.
** Emergency Management (e3 EM) formerly known as Blue292
Other applications that support CAP V1.1 and can interoperate with NeXEO
- Emergency Management (e3 EM) by E3 Solutions Inc.
NeXEO can interoperate with applications that DO NOT support CAP V1.1, too
For more information, please email IAS at info@i-a-s-llc.com
Innovative Autonomous Systems, LLC
1800 Old Pecos Trail, Suite I
Santa Fe , NM 87505
Voice (505) 983-2973
FAX (505) 983-2972
info@i-a-s-llc.com |
