1. CAP - Implementation Update (Implementation Workshop – Geneva, Switzerland 9-10 December 2008)
Norm Paulsen
Meteorological Service of Canada (Toronto)
- Information Strategy Section
December 9th, 2008

2. National Public Alerting System (NPAS)
Canada building a National Public Alerting System using CAP
Involves
Governments at all levels
Media at all levels
Some private companies
Meteorological Service of Canada (part of Environment Canada)
Estimating 100,000 weather alerts annually (250 most critical level)
Natural Resources Canada
Estimating 100 geo-hazard alerts annually (25 most critical level)
Numerous other jurisdictions
Estimates not yet available (Issuer and event list growing and open ended for growth)

3. CAP - Canadian Profile
All parties jointly have built a Canadian Profile of CAP
Canadian events
Canadian locations
Canadian interpretations
Canadian rules
Languages
Issuer rights
A valid CAP-CP file will also validate to CAP

4. The Most Critical Alerts…
are the main interest of the political leaders
are defined as “Broadcast Intrusive” within the Public Alerting System
Distributors are to apply intrusive measures in getting the message out (pushing with bells and whistles)
The Intrusive setting will be handled with the use of a <parameter> tag in the NPAS layer of the CAP files
NPAS to aggregate, validate, modify where necessary, and act as a dispatch centre for the distributors within the NPAS community

5. Met. Service of Canada (MSC)…
has built an implementation of CAP-CP as a guide to all other Canadian efforts in public alerting
Over MSC CAP-CP messages produced since June 2008
So far…6 different “Feeds” (message conduits) created to demonstrate message targeting…
Targeting by Location (city, location)
Targeting by Urgency (immediate, future, etc..)
Targeting by Event Kind (tornado, blizzard)
Others
This MSC implementation is known as the CAP Canadian Profile “Reference Implementation”
We see it as a template for Canadian public alerting stakeholders to follow for interpretation and guidance of CAP and CAP-CP.

6. Web Site (www.alerting.ca/cap)
Sections Include
RSS alert feeds
Reference Implementation
CAP examples
Alerting Scenarios
Supporting Documents
Site Change log
Future Change log
Others
Access filtered to those who self identify to EC