Re: [earlywarning] [CAP] Definition of Warning Categories

["Hannes Tschofenig" <[e-mail]>]

Hi David, 

Is this really so difficult? 

Here is what I would do: Setup a registry that associates labels with a
description of what the label means. Someone maintains the registry (in the
IETF we use IANA). Someone adds a new term - fine. Deleting unused or
revised terms is fine as well. 

So, is there an initial list flying around somewhere already? 

Ciao
Hannes

PS: What is the <category> element in the CAP document used for today? 

>-----Original Message-----
>From: [e-mail] 
>[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of 
>David Aylward (Comcare)
>Sent: 12 July, 2009 19:55
>To: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>Subject: Re: [CAP] Definition of Warning Categories
>
>Hannes:
>
>As Art says, CAP's incident list is very general.  To further 
>Art's point, when it came to the development of what became 
>the OASIS EDXL Distribution Element (DE), we faced the same 
>issue as a primary purpose of the DE is routing messages by 
>incident type.  The CAP categories were far too broad for that.  
>
>So the draft requirements and specification for the DE 
>developed by the cross emergency domain practitioner working 
>group developed a detailed list of incident types for 
>submission to the OASIS EMTC as part of its request for the 
>development of that standard.
>
>The EMTC wisely rejected our suggestion, thinking that (1) the 
>work to create a shared incident type taxomony should be done 
>for the US and other countries, but hadn't been done yet, and 
>(2) such lists of incident types would likely change more 
>frequently than the standard.  
>
>So they adopted a flexible solution of "Managed Lists" for 
>this and similar
>list issues (e.g. roles).   Under this approach values such as incident
>names appear in the standard, along with the name of the 
>managed list you are using.  If there is only one Managed List 
>for that topic in the world, great, but if there are several 
>you can still communicate because you know which list is being used.  
>
>The absence of both initial managed lists and a repository for 
>their locations is an identified gap that hopefully will be 
>addressed soon.  A number of us developed a project to do 
>Managed Lists for incident names and roles, but other 
>priorities have gotten in the way.
>
>
>
> 
>David K. Aylward, President
>COMCARE Emergency Response Technology Group
>1351 Independence Court, SE
>Washington, DC 20003
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>-----Original Message-----
>From: [e-mail]
>[mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Art Botterell
>Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 11:52 AM
>To: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>Subject: Re: [CAP] Definition of Warning Categories
>
>On Jul 12, 2009, at 7/12/09 3:58 AM, Hannes Tschofenig wrote:
>> I was wondering whether there is somewhere a more verbose / more 
>> complete description of the semantic of the individual values.
>
>No, and that's deliberate.  Considering the high levels of 
>uncertainty that so often surround emergent events, the CAP 
>designers (first in the CAP Working Group and later within 
>OASIS) struggled to balance completeness against specificity.  
>There was also a concern that we could get bogged down in 
>trying to perfect the taxonomies and wind up with no standard at all.
>
>So the definitions were deliberately left somewhat open-ended 
>and contextual... some would go so far as to say "vague" and 
>I, for one, wouldn't argue.
>
>- Art
>
>
>
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