Register now for the Call to Action on Emergency Alerting at the Humanitarian Network & Partnerships Week.
 Tropical Cyclone Harold, April 2020. Photo of beach resort in Tonga
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Emergencies and disasters lead to tragic loss of lives and livelihoods. Too much of this loss is due to ineffective public warning: emergency alerts that are not timely enough, not understandable enough, or fail to reach everyone at risk. To overcome these challenges and increase the use of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), ITU, in partnership with the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will endorse a joint Call to Action on Emergency Alerting.
Please join us by registering for this 30 minute session from 13:00-13:30 UTC on 29 April entitled Enabling All-hazard, All-media Emergency Alerting at the Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks 2021 (unocha.org). Registration will require participants to obtain a Virtual OSOCC account.
Common Alerting Protocol
Throughout the world, emergencies, disasters and extreme weather, climate and water-related events lead to tragic losses of lives and livelihoods every year. Ineffective public warnings – emergency alerts that do not provide sufficient advance warning to take preventive action, that are not well understood by the public or that fail to reach everyone at risk – are often part of the problem. The terrible toll on lives and in economic losses can be reduced by improving warnings. This has been demonstrated by all-media, all-hazards public warnings that leverage international standards to transmit alerts across all communications platforms – Internet and social media, radio, television, print, alarms and many more.
A key standard in this context is the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) format. CAP is a digital format for exchanging emergency alerts, allows a consistent alert message to be disseminated simultaneously over multiple communications pathways. Applicable to all types of telecommunications, CAP enhances emergency alerting so that it can be better understood, more precise, reliable and secure, and faster. A CAP message communicates the key facts of the emergency:
- What? Where? When? Impacts? What to do?
Endorsement
The Call to Action is initiated by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Telecommunications Union and the World Meteorological Organization:
- By 2025, all countries have the capability for effective emergency alerting that leverages the Common Alerting Protocol standard, suitable for all-media and all-hazards.
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WMO and implementation of the Common Alerting Protocol
WMO has recognized Common Alerting since 2006 and has promoted its implementation throughout the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of its Members. It organized Common Alerting Protocol implementation workshops for NMHSs in developing and least-developed States. The multi-lingual introductory materials and self-paced basic and advanced CAP courses are available in the WMO Education and Training Programme Moodle Platform at the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Resource Portal.
WMO invites all of its Members and partners to endorse the Call to Action on Emergeny Alerting and to take action to implement the Common Alerting Protocol.
