OASIS Approves New Standards for Emergency Communications

OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, has approved a new set of emergency data interoperability standards. But will the new standards really help us achieve true data interoperability?

According to an article by Todd Weiss on the Computerworld website, the standards are "aimed at drastically improving critical data sharing among emergency first responders, government officials and law enforcement authorities."

Last week, OASIS announced it approved the new Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE) Version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard. "That means it will now be used by emergency management systems vendors to help create data bridges among incompatible systems used by first responders and others," Weiss says.

The OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee developed the standards to help data exchange and information sharing across local, regional, tribal, national and international organizations in both the public and private sector. The Department of Homeland Security says it will incorporate the new standards.

According to Weiss, the EDXL-DE standards "are part of a larger emergency communications interoperability framework that includes the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), a text-based data-interchange format. CAP allows the collection and distribution of 'all-hazard' safety notifications and emergency warnings across information networks and public alert systems used by first responders."

The new standards aim to help fix those compatibility problems by allowing vendors to keep their proprietary formats while building in interoperability between systems that use EDXL-DE.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001315