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SRA International, Inc. Strategy and Performance Group (formerly Touchstone Consulting Group)
FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) Open Platform for Emergency Networks (OPEN) has been making great strides of late with improvements for all IPAWS Collaborative Operating Group (COG) users. Previewed in a webinar today were the features of the latest IPAWS-OPEN release, v3.04. Also highlighted was the availability for state and local alert originators and IPAWS-OPEN developers to make use of the facilities of the FEMA IPAWS Laboratory at the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) in Maryland as a platform to test their systems and alerting capabilities in an environment similar to IPAWS without causing test alerts to circulate in the actual IPAWS network.
The FEMA test laboratory at the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) – photo courtesy of FEMA
In a mid-November FEMA webinar, the alert and warning community received an update on the extensive use of the Commercial Mobile Alert Service (CMAS) by the National Weather Service (NWS) over the last several months and an encouraging report from FEMA on the growing number of alert originators and alert origination service developers that continue to request connection to FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS).
Since 2004, September has been observed as National Preparedness Month. This was sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and aims to encourage American citizens to be proactive in preparations for emergencies in every environment that touches their lives including homes, businesses, schools, and local communities. By doing so, Americans will be better equipped in the face of small or large disaster in their localities such as house fires, earthquakes, and hurricanes.
In a recent webinar, improvements to FEMA’s Integrated Public 
Alert and Warning System – Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN) were announced. This is the portal that alert originators use for entering messages into IPAWS, and FEMA is making it easier for them with some new features that will take effect in September with the deployment of OPEN v3.02.
We have recognized a great deal of chatter and interest in the SMEM community around FEMA’s recently deployed Social Media in Emergency Management training course. So given this, we thought we’d take the course and provide some takeaways that might be helpful to those who are considering taking the training. If you have already taken the course, we would love to hear your thoughts as well. Continue reading »
