- Canadian Profile of the
Common Alerting Protocol (CAP-CP)
CAP-CP
The contents of this webpage are managed by the CAP-CP Working Group.
Table of contents:
- Introduction
- CAP-CP Governance
- CAP-CP Change Management
- CAP-CP Compliance
- CAP-CP Specifications
- Additional Resources
- CAP-CP Comments, Suggestions
The Canadian Profile of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is a set of rules, and managed lists of values, that are recommended for use in Canada. It is often referred to as the CAP-Canadian Profile or simply CAP-CP.
The Canadian Profile is compliant with the Common Alerting Protocol (the "Reference Standard" or CAP) of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS); valid CAP-CP is therefore valid CAP.
As with the Reference Standard, compliance with the CAP-CP is not limited to any one alerting methodology. In fact, significant effort has been made to ensure CAP-CP does not include bias to any one method, channel, system, or sub-group of alerting stakeholder. Additional rules specific to a method, channel, system, or sub-group are therefore outside the scope of the CAP-CP Working Group.
The CAP-CP primarily centers on four main requirements and constraints. They are as follows:
- Constraint of one subject event type per alert message
- Requirements associated with languages
- Requirements associated with event identification
- Requirements associated with location identification
Additionally, there are other rules and recommendations intended to help overcome implementation challenges that have been identified by the early adopters of CAP and CAP-CP.
More specific information can be found in the CAP-CP Introduction and Rule Set.
It has been proposed that CAP-CP governance align with the Communications Interoperability Strategy for Canada and Action Plan. In the interim, the CAP-CP Working Group will continue to manage CAP-CP and its documents, and the Canadian Association for Public Alerting and Notification (CAPAN) will continue to offer CAP-CP secretariat services, including the hosting of this official CAP-CP webpage.
It has been proposed that CAP-CP be managed to a formal change management process that would be defined by a new standard of Canada that could be used for managing other emergency communications protocols.
There is no formal compliance program for CAP-CP at this time.
A CAP-CP Validation Tool will soon be published for the CAP-CP community to use and maintain. It is not a product of the CAP-CP Working Group, but is recognized by it.
CAP-CP is currently published as three documents: Introduction and Rule Set, Event References, and Location References.
The versions of the three documents are presented in reverse chronological order with their current status. A "Draft" is published for public comment. In some cases, more than one version may be identified as "Current". Please note that a CAP message can support more than one version of the CAP-CP Events and Location References, and that it is up to system operators to decide which version(s) they will support.
CAP-CP documents managed by the CAP-CP Working Group have been versioned as Beta documents, with a view to Version 1.0 being a product of the community that has followed a more open and formal change management process.
CAP-CP Introduction and Rule Set
|
Versions |
Date |
Comments |
| Beta 0.4 | July 2012 | Formalization of Beta 0.4 Draft. Clarifications. |
|
October 2010 |
Alignment with CAP 1.2. Corrections. Introduces more specific area reference interpretation. |
|
|
May 2009 |
Initial developer ready version. Aligns with CAP 1.1. |
CAP-CP Event References
|
Versions |
Date |
Comments |
| Beta 0.5 | July 2012 | Corrections. |
|
October 2010 |
Additions and corrections. |
|
|
January 2010 |
Correction if initial developer ready version. |
CAP-CP Location References
|
Versions |
Date |
Comments |
| Beta 0.4 | July 2012 | Align with Statistics Canada 2011 update to the 2006 Standard Geographical Classification. Corrections. Clarifications. |
|
October 2010 |
Align with Statistics Canada 2010 update to the 2006 Standard Geographical Classification. |
The CAP-CP Archives are maintained on a separate page.
This content of this website has been purposely limited to that which is officially recognized to be the domain of the CAP-CP Working Group. Other resources, such as the CAPAN Technical web page, offer additional alerting information and resource links.
Comments and suggestions are welcomed, with the understanding that they are offered freely, without any conditions, including any requirement for attribution. Click here to send your comments and suggestions to the CAP-CP Working Group.
