WMO and Public Warning presented 9 December, 2008 at the “CAP Implementers Workshop" WMO Secretariat, Geneva by Jean-Michel Rainer, Director WMO Information System (WIS)

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 2 WMO  Comprised of 188 Member nations and territories  WMO Information System, including its Global Telecommunication System for international exchange of weather, water and climate data, predictions and alerts.  National Meteorological and Hydrological Services have crucial public alerting functions

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 3 WMO Global Observing System  Observing systems, on land, at sea, upper-air and spaceborne  Owned and operated by WMO Members

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 4 Analysis and Forecasting  Generating and distributing meteorological and related geophysical analysis, forecasts and warnings

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 5 WMO’s Global Telecommunications System (GTS) National Meteorological and Hydrological Service NMC: National Meteorological Center RTH: Regional Telecommunications Hub

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 6 WMO Information System Government and civil defence authorities Media General public Private sector National Meteorological and Hydrological Service WMO Information System (WIS) GISC: Global Information System Center DCPC: Data Collection or Processing Center NC: National Center

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 7 Tropical Cyclones Example

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 8 90 % of natural disasters, 70% of casualties, 75% of economic losses are related to hydro-meteorological hazards such as floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, severe storms... Weather, Water and Natural Hazards

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 9 The Challenge of Public Warning "Collaborative actions are necessary to assure that standards-based, all-media, all-hazards public warning becomes an essential infrastructure component available to all societies worldwide."

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 10 CAP Implementations and WMO  It is absolutely essential to maintain public trust in alerting systems  On the public Internet, we need a high level of authority and authenticity for alert messages  WMO applauds the 2006 announcement that authoritative, authenticated alerts in CAP format can be disseminated over the Internet at no charge by any official source worldwide

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 11 WMO Members Implementing CAP  U.S. and Canada have shown leadership in CAP implementation  WMO Severe Weather Information Centre has begun work on CAP  Adopting CAP into EUMETNET’s Meteoalarm will be very important  Programmes promoting CAP implementations in developing countries are very welcome  ITU Development Sector approved guidelines on CAP implementation in developing nations

9 Dec 2006CAP Implementers Workshop 12 Conclusions  The 188 WMO Members have crucial public alerting functions, often based in National Meteorological and Hydrological Services  WMO infrastructures for observations, analysis, forecasting, and communications can support global implementation of the CAP standard  WMO stands ready to do its part in assuring that all-media, all-hazards public warning becomes available to all societies worldwide