NC4 - E Team - R9.8 Using E Team - IPAWS and CAP Alerts

The Integrated Public Alert and Warning System - Open Platform for Emergency Networks (IPAWS-OPEN) provides interoperability interfaces for the sharing of alerts. This interface provides data structures and rules of operations designed to enable information sharing between diverse systems. In general, this interface conforms to open messaging standards as defined through the Emergency Management Technical Committee sponsored by the OASIS standards organization and through the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).

How Team / IPAWS Interoperability Works

E Team can be configured to communicate with IPAWS 3.0 which supports the following dissemination channels - EAS (Emergency Alert System) and NWEM (Non Weather Emergency Messages), and CMAS (Commercial Mobile Alert System). Not all COGs will be authorized to transmit HazCollect and/or CMAS alerts. This is
determined in by IPAWS and controlled through your organization's COG ID.

1. An E Team user with the proper permissions, CAP (EDITOR) or CAP (AUTHOR), creates a CAP Alert.
2. E Team user with the permission ETCAP Transmit initiates transmission to IPAWS.
3. E Team validates your message type parameters based on selections made at top of CAP Info Block.
   • If validation fails, transmission will not occur.
   • Composition errors will be identified.
   • Once the corrections are made, the user can initiate transmission again.
4. IPAWS receives the alert.
5. IPAWS validates the alert message for CAP message compliance. If the message passes, IPAWS pushes to standard CAP channels, AND
6. IPAWS validates the alert message for IPAWS Profile compliance. Only those messages containing a Special Handling Code value of "IPAWSv1.0" will be considered. If the message passes this step, IPAWS validates for all other possible dissemination channels and pushes to each based on success for that supported alert type. Each message type has its own validation rules that must be followed.
7. Once IPAWS has completed validation, and moved the alert through all possible channels, data is posted for retrieval by E Team as to success or failure of message. E Team displays the Transmission status, as well as details provided by IPAWS regarding failure or error for each message type. This status is visible while in read mode of the CAP Authoring form.

CAP Alert Authoring

The purpose of the CAP Alert Authoring form in E Team is to provide a single input to activate multiple types of alerting thru IPAWS. This is meant to reduce the workload associated with using multiple warning systems while enhancing technical reliability and target-audience effectiveness, as well as to help ensure consistency in the information transmitted over multiple delivery systems.

There are two (2) ways to author a CAP alert in E Team.

1. By clicking the Create button from the CAP Alert Authoring form.
2. By clicking the link, Create CAP Alert, shown at the bottom of the Notification section of an Incident report.

Due to the number of available fields on the authoring form, and the specific rules required for a successful transmission of a CAP Alert through all selected channels, E Team has provided detailed field level help and validation rules within the application. This information can be accessed by clicking the Help option at the top of the CAP Authoring form while logged into your E Team application.