Acronym

Name

Description

FEMA

Federal Emergency Management Agency

A division of Homeland Security, FEMA coordinates response to disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities.

IPAWS

Integrated Public Alert & Warning System

A national alert and warning system that is managed by FEMA.

JITC Environment

Joint Interoperability Test Command

A testing and simulation environment for IPAWS agencies.

COG ID

Collaborative Operating Group Identifier

An IPAWS-issued ID that authorizes agencies to send messages.

EAS

Emergency Alert System

A public warning system used by federal, state and local authorities to deliver important emergency information, such as AMBER alerts and weather information targeted to specific areas, through broadcast, cable, satellite and wireline providers. One of the four IPAWS-supported channels.

NWEM

Non-Weather Emergency Message

A tool for federal, state and local authorities to issues localized EAS messages for non-weather related incidents. NWEM utilizes the NOAA Weather Radio Network to disseminate alerts over local television and radio stations. One of the four IPAWS-supported channels.

NOAA

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

A division of Homeland Security that supports NWEM.

WEA

Wireless Emergency Alerts

A public safety system that sends geographically-targeted text message alerts to wireless and mobile phones. WEA was previously known as CMAS (Commercial Mobile Alert System). One of the four IPAWS-supported channels.

CAP Exchange

Common Alerting Protocol

Also known as COG-to-COG, the Common Alerting Protocol is an XML-based data format for exchanging public warnings and emergencies between alerting technologies. CAP allows a warning message to be disseminated simultaneously over many warning systems to many applications. One of the four IPAWS-supported channels.

CAP RSS Feed

Rich Site Summary Feed

A tool for publishing warnings and emergencies to a CAP-formatted RSS feed.

SAME Code

Specific Area Message Encoding

A protocol used for geo-coding locations.

PUBLIC Feed

PUBLIC Feed

A tool that allows third party agencies, such as Google Public Alerts, to redistribute alerts.