[OGC Press Release] Core Services Initiative Will Advance Emergency Communications

[OGC Press Release]

PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For information about this announcement, contact:

Brian Vahey
COMCARE
tel: +1-202-429-0574 x 211
bvahey at comcare.org

Rebecca Harned-Castillo
National Association of State Fire Marshals
tel: +1-202-737-1226
rharned at firemarshals.org

Jeff Nedelman
National Emergency Number Association
tel: +1-703-812-4600
jnedelman at nena.org

Sam Bacharach
Executive Director, Outreach and Community Adoption
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc
tel: +1-703-352-3938
sbacharach at opengeospatial.org

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December 07, 2007 -- Washington, DC -  COMCARE Emergency Response
Alliance, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), the National
Emergency Number Association (NENA) and the National Association of
State Fire Marshals (NASFM) jointly announced they will conduct a Core
Services Initiative to significantly improve interoperable,
inter-organizational communications and information sharing for
emergency preparedness, response and recovery. The initiative will
leverage requirements and technical designs developed by COMCARE, OGC
processes and standards-based technologies, and the skills, expertise
and best practices of NENA and NASFM to advance this effort.

"For the wide diversity of professions and jurisdictions, public
and private, to communicate, there must be sophisticated, shared
information technology services ‘in the middle'," said
Steve Cooper, new COMCARE Director, and former Chief Information
Officer of both the Department of Homeland Security and the American
Red Cross. "These are Core Services," he added. "They
contain critical information about the organizations, registered by
them, and the rules, set by policy makers, about what each group can
do in an information sharing environment."

The need for Core Services has been consistently identified in FCC
Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) reports,
Congressional legislation, NENA's Next Generation Partner Program
recommendations and in numerous other reports. In emergency
situations, agencies need to share critical information, which
requires that they know what organizations need specific information,
or how to register to receive it, and where (computer, radio frequency
or other) to send or retrieve information. COMCARE has designed two
Core services to meet this need; an Emergency Provider Access
Directory agency locator service and identity management/access
control service. To move from design to deployment, COMCARE, NENA, and
NASFM are seeking one or more technology partners to supply the
"alpha" versions of these two Core Services. An Invitation
to Qualify has been released. If you are interested in being
considered as a technology partner, please contact Judith Woodhall at
jwoodhall at comcare.org [mailto:jwoodhall at comcare.org] .

The Initiative will subsequently leverage the developed Core Services
along with OGC's open standards to demonstrate the ability of
authorized agencies to send warnings and alerts to the appropriate
public, to send and receive emergency messages (data) to and from
other authorized organizations, and to more easily link radio,
cellular and land-line voice systems together.

The Core Services Initiative will have three phases. COMCARE will lead
the first phase, focused on the development of the Core Services.
During the second phase, a Core Services Interoperability Pilot will
be conducted using OGC's proven piloting process to
standards-enable the services to demonstrate interoperability of the
Core Services with standards-based geospatial, sensor, location-based
services, and other technologies for improved situational awareness. A
third phase will emphasize field trials of the Core Services,
showcasing their all hazards capabilities in real world settings. The
end result will be tested core services that companies can
competitively offer to the emergency response community in a
standardized manner.

Bob Cobb, Interim Executive Director of NENA, said, "We
wouldn't have a telephone system without telephone directories, or
an Internet without Domain Name Servers, yet today there is no single,
standards-based approach to record either organizations and
information about them, or what information they are allowed to send
and receive." Robert Doke of NASFM, and Oklahoma State Fire
Marshal, added: "Core services are critical missing elements in
the national campaign for emergency interoperability, and they need to
be developed cooperatively which is what this initiative is
doing."

OGC's president, Mark Reichardt, added, "We look forward to
contributing the OGC proven method of advancing standards-based
interoperability to this important work, and to illustrating the
improved situational awareness provided by applying interoperable
geospatial technologies."

For more information on the Core Services Initiative, including
opportunities to participate, please contact Judith Woodhall,
Executive Director, COMCARE,   jwoodhall at comcare.org
[mailto:jwoodhall at comcare.org] , or +1 202 429-0574 x203.

About COMCARE

COMCARE is a non-profit national advocacy organization of over 100
members, all dedicated to advancing emergency response. To be
effective, responders and others involved in emergency response
efforts need easy, rapid access to essential data, and to be able to
share it. That means implementing an approach that crosses domains,
allowing responders to access the information they need when they need
it, whether the emergency is a day to day or mass casualty incident.
For more information, visit http://www.comcare.org/.

About NASFM

The membership of the National Association of State Fire Marshals
(NASFM - www.firemarshals.org) comprises the most senior fire
officials in the United States. State Fire Marshals'
responsibilities vary from state to state, but Marshals tend to be
responsible for fire safety code adoption and enforcement, fire and
arson investigation, fire incident data reporting and analysis, public
education and advising Governors and State Legislatures on fire
protection. Some State Fire Marshals are responsible for fire fighter
training, hazardous materials incident responses, wildland fires and
the regulation of natural gas and other pipelines.

About NENA

NENA is  The Voice of 9-1-1 TM .  NENA promotes implementation and
awareness of 9-1-1 as North America's universal emergency number.
NENA is the leading professional non-profit organization dedicated
solely to 9-1-1 emergency communications issues. NENA serves its
nearly 7,000 members in 48 chapters across the U.S., Canada and Mexico
through policy advocacy, establishment of technical and operational
standards, certification programs and a broad spectrum of educational
offerings. Find out more at http://www.nena.org/.

About OGC

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 340
companies, government agencies, research organizations, and
universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly
available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support
interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless
and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower
technology developers to make geospatial information and services
accessible and useful with any application that needs to be
geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/.