An effective alert and warning system is critical to saving lives during emergencies and standards are a fundamental building block for such a system; they play a critical role in the development and implementation of a reliable system. However, standards can only be useful when the community uses them and has a vested stake in its development; in addition, the adoption of standards relies on the extent of community engagement.

We have recently seen a couple of positive examples of community engagement: the development of the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) Profile and the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) C Interface Specification. Both of these efforts have involved active participation and engagement of the public and the private sector resulting in successful outcomes.

The CAP IPAWS Profile provides a standard format to share alerts and warnings among multiple systems and was recently approved by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Emergency Management Technical Committee. In addition, the C Interface Specification serves as an implementation guide between the Federal and the Commercial Mobile Service Provider (CMSP) Gateway and was adopted by Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Solution (ATIS)/Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). These initiatives demonstrate the value of the public/private partnerships and the value such partnerships bring to solving the problem.