Presented at the CAP Implementation Workshopin Negombo, Sri Lanka, 17 June 2014, by Eliot Christian <echristian@usgs.gov>

Advisor to WMO Public Weather Services Division

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)Weather and Disaster Risk Reduction Services Department (WDS)

Public Weather Services Programme (PWS)

Update on the International Register of

Alerting Authorities

17 June 2014 The International Register of Alerting Authorities 2

Established by WMO and ITU Identifies officially recognized alerting

authorities, asserted by WMO Members (treaty among 185 nations and 6 territories)

Register has categories of alert messages, plus URL's for forecasts and CAP messages

Users of alert messages and others can subscribe to a news feed to stay current with any changes to the Register

What is the international Register of Alerting Authorities?

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Why is the Register necessary?

Aggregators and other intermediaries typically lack direct knowledge needed to distinguish an authoritative source of alert messages

This lack becomes more critical as alerting makes more use of large public networks

The Register of Alerting Authorities is a reference to address that knowledge gap

Each Register entry asserts that a particular source of alert messages is regarded by a WMO Member as authoritative

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What are the key features of the Register?

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The Register

itself is linked to the

ISO/ITU OID Tree

http:/www.oid-info.com/get/2.49.0

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Register

entries are

typically linked

to a nation

http:/www.oid-info.com/get/2.49.0.0

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U.S. entry in the OID tree links back to the WMO

register

http:/www.oid-info.com/get/2.49.0.0.840

link to US entry in the Register

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http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/amp/pwsp/documents/AIR_PWS-20.pdf

Administrative Procedure for Registering WMO Alerting Identifiers

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RSS Feed for Changes in Registered Authoritieshttp://alerting.worldweather.org/rss.xml

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How are the Register entries maintained?

WMO Member PR’s were requested to designate editors for their Register records

Each designated editor is approved by WMO/PWS to use the Register application

Register application operates at Hong Kong Observatory; will be mirrored in South Africa

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What is in the Register Right Now?

One or more editors have been officially designated by 121 of the WMO Members

The Register has 128 editors currently

The Register has at least one alerting authority record for each of the 191 WMO Members (185 nations and 6 territories)

There are 249 separate alerting authority records in the Register at present