Data Dissemination
National Weather Services systems address non-weather emergency messages (e.g., chemical spills, AMBER alerts, and radiological events), but they must be manually transcribed by NWS staff. While currently operational, these messages are prone to processing delays and human error. In some areas, emergency managers (EM) manually create the text messages and then proceed to call their local weather forecast offices. These messages that are currently created are subject to typographical and grammatical errors when further transcribed and composed upon reporting to the weather forecast office personnel. These messages are subsequently manually entered into the WFO's broadcast schedules for NWS forecast, watches, and warning products.
The NWS is developing the All-Hazards Emergency Message Collection System, HazCollect , to collect and efficiently distribute non-weather emergency messages (NWEM). NWEMs, commonly known as Civil Emergency Messages (CEMs), will be sent through the NWS dissemination infrastructure, other national systems, and to the Emergency Alert System (EAS).
To originate NWEMs, emergency managers will use the desktop client of DHS's Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) or other commercial or government (COTS/GOTS/MOTS) incident management software applications to write and post (send) NWEM text messages. DMIS enables the first responder and emergency management staff to share information seamlessly by providing free software to responder organizations. DMIS is one of two major components of the Disaster Management (DM) E-Gov Initiative, part of the President's Management Agenda for making government more focused on people and results. DMIS will then relay the NWEM to the HazCollect server for message authorization and dissemination through DMIS and the NWS dissemination infrastructure (and to many other dissemination services), NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards, and the Emergency Alert System. The COTS/GOTS/MOTS incident management applications must be CAP-enabled and interfaced with DHS's Disaster Management Open Platform for Emergency Networks (DM-OPEN). DM-OPEN is an interoperability infrastructure enabling secure data exchange for sharing emergency alerts or incident-related information between disparate systems through the use of standards-based messages.
Emergency management organizations may learn more about DMIS and register to use DMIS by visiting the DMIS web site. Registration to use HazCollect is expected in the fall of 2007 with national availability of the HazCollect service before the end of 2007. Visit this web site for updates and to register for HazCollect after registration opens.
NWS expects HazCollect to be available nationwide, through the DMIS Toolkit and DM OPEN API interfaces, fall of 2007. NWS and DHS had been addressing program management responsibility transfer and IT consolidation issues. Due to a number of physical hardware moves and resulting communications and staff changes during the summer and early fall of 2007, the prudent course of action was to delay making HazCollect fully available.
In January 2007, emergency managers familiar with the DMIS Toolkit in California, Florida and Kentucky took part in a successful November 2006 follow-on HazCollect demonstration of the DMIS Toolkit and HazCollect server software. The demonstration was held to ensure that the discrepancies identified during the HazCollect Operational Acceptance Test (OAT) last summer were fixed and demonstrate end-to-end HazCollect server functionalities between the DHS's DMIS NWEM Toolkit and NWS dissemination systems. During the testing, emergency managers and NWS staff sent test messages using the DMIS Toolkit, including national test messages broadcast nationwide on NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio and other NWS dissemination systems.
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