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Now here's a good idea: XML for emergency data

Come to find out there's a special flavor of XML for sharing data among emergency personnel (assuming the computers are up-and-running during an emergency, of course). Apparently the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is taking the lead on the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL), which includes a "common alerting protocol." Seems like a good idea to get emergency agencies all taking on the same data frequency, so to speak, since their radio frequencies are often different. :-(

 

I just hope EDXL is compatible with the Global Justice XML data standard being pushed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. We are working on the same team, right, guys?

What People Are Saying

The Common Alerting Protocol

The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) actually led EDXL out of the gate by several years... originally an open-source project, it was formalized by OASIS, embraced by DHS and industry, and eventually became the model for the larger EDXL project. For now CAP technically remains distinct from EDXL, although there are plans to bring it into the family once EDXL ripens.

The Global Justice XML is part of the larger National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), and EDXL and CAP are both contained within that framework. Global Justice is a very broad vocabulary, but with relatively little definition of particular documents or exchanges. CAP and EDXL are use-case driven message sets, longer on syntax and much narrower on semantics. NIEM is an overarching framework and process to ensure that all these pieces grow into an organic whole.

There's a quick roadmap to all this alphabet soup being developed on the "CAP Cookbook" wiki.

By the way, an update to the CAP spec, version 1.1, is in the OASIS public-comment process until July 15, 2005. And the first EDXL component, a routing "wrapper" should be coming to public comment in the near future as well.

As long as EDXL and Global

As long as EDXL and Global Justice XML are both valid XML formats it shouldn't be too difficult to translate between the 2 using XSLT.