Step 2: Assess Current Services
| Site: | WMO Education and Training Programme |
| Course: | Guidelines for Implementing CAP Alerts |
| Book: | Step 2: Assess Current Services |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Friday, 26 April 2024, 8:11 PM |
Step 2: Assess Current Services
1. Understand New Services
2. Assess Current Services
3. Identify Resource Needs
4. Develop an Implementation Plan
5. Secure Support and Funding
6-7. Execute, Evaluate, and Maintain
In order to best plan how to integrate CAP, you’ll want to assess current service capabilities in the context of offering CAP alerts. If you are currently issuing alerts, review your current processes, tools, personnel, and training. Consult with management, legal, IT and other staff in order to get a complete picture of your current alerting services and protocols.
If you currently are not issuing alerts, you'll need to develop the processes and protocols related to issuing alerts. Those can vary widely, depending on many factors such as your organization's responsibilities, local and national laws. While this course is targeted at organizations that are already issuing alerts, you could use this as an opportunity to develop a CAP alert demonstration project. The larger task of implementing a complete alerting process and protocols could follow.
Action Item: Current Services Diagram
Action Item: Current Services Diagram
Create a flowchart or diagram of your current alerting process. Include all components (processes, tools, systems, personnel, media venues, target audience) of your alerting system.
Example of a Simplified System Chart
Action Item: Integrated CAP Diagram
With a clear picture of your current alerting process in mind, assess how to best integrate the drafting and publishing of CAP alerts to a CAP alert news feed. You may already be using tools that are capable of issuing CAP alerts. You may need a software development effort to update your current alerting tool. Or you may need a new or separate alert publishing tool (such as the one hosted at https://cap.alert-hub.org or available as part of the CAP Tools open-source effort at https://github.com/CAPTools). Yours and your IT staff's understanding of CAP becomes important in assessing your technical resource needs.
Action Item: Integrated CAP Diagram
Using the diagram of your current alerting processes as the basis, modify it to integrate CAP-related tools and processes. Review the diagram with key IT and operational staff.
Example Diagrams
Here's a high level overview depicting the sources, paths, and outputs of alert messages as part of the comprehensive warning systems managed by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). CAP-enabled messages are authored and then distributed throughout various aggregators and publication systems, including weather radio and an emergency alerting system.
Here's another diagram depicting parts of the FEMA IPAWS system:
