CAP in Canada – Finding our Audience

CAP in Canada – Finding our Audience

Norm Paulsen

Meteorologist, National Services Operation Division

Major Projects Office, MSC

Environment Canada

June, 2014

– April 20, 2023

Environment Canada

• Environment Canada issues to the Public approximately 15-20 thousand warnings for weather related hazards every year

• Each of these warnings produces on average 6 to 7 updates.

• This results in (20,000 x 7) = 140,000 distinct warning messages per year

• Each message has to be duplicated as we have 2 official languages

• So for the traditional audiences we serve, we produce approximately 280-300K WMO formatted warning bulletins every year

• Therefore it would seem we have 280-300K discrete bundles of alert message information per year that could be placed into CAP form

– April 20, 2023

Hurricane Sandy 2011

– April 20, 2023

Environment Canada (Warnings)

• Each of our warning messages has always been a full accounting of– what new areas are affected,– what areas continue to be affected,– what areas are ended,– and what areas have moved on to a new threat

• All other differences are discussed in the descriptive text– Hazard details– Hazard timing– Severity– Instructions (if any)– Other as needed

• CAP however, serves a new Audience, and much of that audience wants the alert message information to be broken down into smaller information bundles than they already are (smaller = more of them)

– April 20, 2023

Partners• For the purposes of discussion…

– our warning audience is the Public, Media and other end clients– our CAP audience is…

▪ our existing Partners that want to automate their alerting,▪ New Partners getting into the game for reasons to be listed later,▪ and their chosen equipment Vendors

• This new CAP audience as a whole can be classified into Partner groups

• Each Partner group has new and effective ways of distributing our Alert information for which we are thankful

• New and Existing Partner Groups▪ Situational Awareness Emergency Responders (gov’t agencies – all levels)▪ Broadcasters (radio, tv)▪ Commercial Mobile (cellular)▪ Internet (Weather Network, Google)▪ Others (advertisers, app producers, private companies)

– April 20, 2023

Environment Canada (CAP)

• In our process of creating CAP we started by segmenting our warning information by affected areas - same as we do in our bulletins

• Therefore, our CAP audience receives ~ 500-600K discrete information segments in CAP

– Segmented by affected area– Segmented by language

• But since we started putting this information out in CAP, our CAP Audience size has started to increase considerably

• It is the however the extra-ordinary events where the difficulties of breaking the information bundles down further can become problematic if not handled well

• Example…a Hurricane and its hazards

– April 20, 2023

Hazards Associated with Hurricanes

– April 20, 2023

Damaging WindInstruction: Secure

property Heavy Rain

Instruction: Prepare for Water Damage

Heavy RainInstruction: Prepare for Water Damage

Storm SurgeInstruction: Seek

high ground

Storm SurgeInstruction: Seek

high ground

– April 20, 2023

Concept of Audience Segments

• We’ve come to learn that our CAP audience however has their own additional segmentation criteria

▪Emergency Level only hazards (urgency/severity/type/etc..)

▪Instructions to each affected area of the hazard (instruction/response type)

▪Dissemination channel requirements (text length/audio/expires/resources/etc..)

▪Repeat Messages for cycling (broadcast repeats)

▪Others

▪500-600K becomes even more

– April 20, 2023

Approach?

• Over the years, certain methodologies were employed to make distributing warning information work for us

• Basically, we put the information out there and let our Partners extract what they need

• Since CAP is very well designed and structured to accommodate numerous methodologies we were able to retain our existing approach within CAP

• There is building pressure to change; but should we?▪ Conflicting approaches

▪ Ownership of policy

▪ Changing Partner Systems

▪ Our own costs, resource base, federal policies

– April 20, 2023

So how many Audience Segments?

• So, in our example, the storm is still 2 days away but…

• If we generalize everything into 1 initial story (one initial Alert) Canada would have 2 audience segments (one for the English and one for the French)

• If we generalize into 3 initial stories based on hazards we would have 6 audience segments

– For each story, only the language would differ across the 2 segments within that hazard based story

• What we actually do is generalize based on the Public Communities served and the social aspect of properly labeling each Alert to something meaningful…

– April 20, 2023

MarineHurricane Force Wind Warning

PublicTropical Storm

Warning

PublicStorm Surge

Warning

PublicStorm Surge

Warning

– April 20, 2023

Alerts vs. Hazards• We have 3 hazards and 3 alerts - but they are not 1 to 1

▪ Wind -> Alert 1 (Marine – Hurricane Force Wind warning)

▪ Rain/Wind -> Alert 2 (Public – Hurricane Watch)

▪ Storm Surge - > Alert 3 (Public – Storm Surge Warning)

• So we craft a set of stories (one per alert) that most effectively allow us to communicate the situation

• As mentioned, our Partners had to extract information, that was meaningful for them, from an “all inclusive information pool” that was either a bulletin (simple text) or data file (simple structure)

• They would customize and update their displays/presentations from selected information within each message update on that warning

• CAP changed that allowing for much more and better structured information

– April 20, 2023

How we did it?• So the plan was to replicate that information pool practice

by putting in everything we had within one single CAP message

– We used the Canadian Profile

– We used the Canadian Profile defined “events” and “geocodes” lists for consistency

– We used the Canadian Profile rules (i.e. <language> element is required, not optional and the values are to be “fr-ca” and “en-ca”)

– We use <parameters> for customized extended elements

• For each defined affected area status for our warning audience we use a separate <info> block

• Every audience segment that goes with the same warning is put into the same CAP message

– Multiple <info> blocks

– April 20, 2023

– April 20, 2023

MarineHurricane Force Wind Warning

PublicTropical Storm

Warning

PublicStorm Surge

Warning

PublicStorm Surge

Warning

PublicHurricane Warning

– April 20, 2023

– April 20, 2023

What next? Decision and Result

• The Storm Surge warning is its own alert so can be updated independently

• However, the Tropical Storm and Hurricane warnings are inextricably tied together so must change together for consistency

• They have to be issued together and all <references> to previous CAP messages have to align

• Based on what is most important, the upgrade to Hurricane warning is done first

• All transitioned out locations in the Tropical Storm warning are automatically adjusted (but the story hasn’t changed yet for that one)

– April 20, 2023

– April 20, 2023

Warning continuity in CAP• The Hurricane warning goes out in a CAP message

• Simultaneously the automatic CAP message on the Tropical Storm warning goes out

• Consistency in message across the two alerts and across the various location states is maintained

• Then the updated Tropical Storm warning is updated when there is time to update the story (usually a short time later as the storm analysis was already done at the Hurricane analysis stage)

• In this case the affected areas have changed

• Certainly the story will have too

– April 20, 2023

Quebec CityMsg1:Tropical

Storm Warning(New)

FrederictonMsg1:Tropical

Storm Warning(New)

HalifaxMsg1:Tropical

Storm Warning(New)

CharlottetownMsg1:Tropical

Storm Warning(New)

Quebec CityMsg2: Tropical

Storm Warning(Ended)

FrederictonMsg2: Tropical

Storm Warning(Continued)

HalifaxMsg2: Hurricane

Warning(Upgraded)

CharlottetownMsg2: Hurricane

Warning(Upgraded)

– April 20, 2023

CAP details• The Hurricane warning goes out in a CAP message (initiating an

Alert message chain - <msgType>Alert)

• Simultaneously the automatic CAP message on the Tropical Storm warning goes out (updating that Alert message chain - <msgType>Update)

• Consistency in message across the two alerts and across the various location states is maintained

• Then the updated Tropical Storm warning is again updated when there is time to update the story to the warning audience (updating that Alert message chain - <msgType>Update)

• In this case the affected areas have changed

• Certainly the story will have to change too

– April 20, 2023

Env. Can. CAP Design• Our CAP is designed to hold everything we have on the Alert

• This fully benefits our Situational Awareness Emergency Responders Partner Group that want the full accounting of every change

– They can filter and display any alert individually (if they want)– They can easily track the two or more alerts individually (if they want)– They can cross index each alert to the one event and easily relate them– They can cross index the hazard events and easily relate them (hazards as they

are defined in the Canadian Profile)– They can track an individual location within the event and see how that location

was impacted by the alerts over time (history)

• To make this easy for our own tracking and for our Emergency Responder Partner group, we use multiple <info> blocks within a CAP message rather than using separate CAP messages for each info block. Why?

– April 20, 2023

<identifier> and <references>• CAP is a “wipe and replace” design

– Wipe all old messages that are <referenced>

– This is done when processing the <alert> level in the CAP message

– Replace with all the new messages that are present

– This is done when processing the <info> level in the CAP message

– Each <info> block is an separate Public warning message that can be displayed separately

• So in large extra-ordinary multi-hazard events (and in our case with multiple official language policies) the number of CAP messages is in the hundreds instead of the thousands

• Consistency issues with multiple alerts, multiple messages, multiple languages will not be attributed to our CAP offerings as it is all there at the same time in one place

• This is theoretical as there hasn’t been enough to gauge its effectiveness but this is the current strategy

– April 20, 2023

<?xml version = “1.0” encoding = “UTF-8”?><alert xmlns = “urn:oasis:names:tc:emergency:cap:1.2>

<identifier>1.1</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references></reference><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info>

</alert>



</alert>


<identifier>1.1</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references></reference><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 2</description ></info>

</alert>



</alert>


<identifier>1.1</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references></reference><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 2</description ></info><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 3</description ></info>

</alert>



</alert>

Hurricane Warning CAP Message

– April 20, 2023


<identifier>1.2</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references>1.1</reference><info> <effective>Time 2</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info>

</alert>


<identifier>1.2</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references>1.1 2.1 3.1</reference><info> <effective>Time 2</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info>

</alert>


<identifier>1.2</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references>1.2</reference><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info><info> <effective>Time 2</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 2</description ></info>

</alert>



</alert>


<identifier>1.2</identifier><msgType>Alert</msgType><source>Environment Canada</source><references>1.2</reference><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 1</description ></info><info> <effective>Time 1</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 2</description ></info><info> <effective>Time 2</effective> <headline>Warning 1</headline> <description>Condition 3</description ></info>

</alert>



</alert>

Tropical Storm Warning CAP Message

– April 20, 2023

What about our other Partners?

• Different and new Partner communities (mostly public alert disseminators) started automating with CAP because of…

– Legislation (from some other arm of the federal government)– The knowledge that Structured information existed– The availability of feeds that carried them– Community Pressure

• These different Partner communities each came with their own Assumptions and Expectations…

▪ The CAP files they get would be only the CAP files they need▪ The CAP files they get would contain only the information they need▪ The CAP files they get would work with their chosen vendor equipment

• Most expect 1 <info> block per CAP message but some can handle our multiple <info> blocks per CAP message (i.e. Google)

– April 20, 2023



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>



</alert>

Multiple CAP message files

– April 20, 2023

Final Thoughts

• Since 2011, when we started regularly putting out CAP, the utility of CAP in Canada has been proven

• Multiple <info> blocks in a single CAP message file make our Alert Management much easier for us in large extra-ordinary events with multiple hazards

• They are not so popular with some Partners and vendors

• But the fact that both practices are possible in CAP demonstrates that CAP is scale-able to large multi hazards

• Using other practices like Aggregators, Re-originators, etc… (this exampled problem is solvable but it takes policy and partnerships)

• Tackling effective extraordinary event alerting still has it hurdles but they are now based in policy and partnerships – CAP has done its part

Thank You

Norm Paulsen

Meteorologist, National Services Operation Division

Major Projects Office, MSC

Environment Canada

June, 2014

CAP in Canada – Finding our Audience

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