CMS Documentation
CAP Composer¶
The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) provides an open, non-proprietary digital message format for all types of alerts and notifications. It does not address any particular application or telecommunications method. The CAP format is compatible with emerging techniques, such as Web services, as well as existing formats including the Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) used for the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Radio and the Emergency Alert System (EAS)
The CAP xml response follows the structure of the schema provided at http://docs.oasis-open.org/emergency/cap/v1.2/CAP-v1.2-os.html
CAP Warning Composer Features¶
The CAP composer tool is a solution that provides a range of functionalities to support the NMHS in seamlessly issuing CAP. It has been developed with an aim of increasing the adoption of CAP by NMHS in Africa. Some of the key features of the tool include:
Possibility to run as standalone composer or integrate into Wagtail-CMS-based website
Search Engine Optimization support to increase visibility and attract targeted traffic to an alert
Support for Approval Workflow from composer to approver, including commenting and email notification support
Interoperable XML API of Alert List and Detail for integration with CAP Aggregators - Live CAP creation and editing preview
Draw / Upload Polygon Functionality for Alert Area/Areas
User-friendly and mobile friendly CAP alert creation and management
Alert to Alert/Alerts Reference Linkage
Published python package with version management and changelogs https://github.com/wmo-raf/cap-editor
Related Setup/Installation and Usage instructions
Creating a CAP Alert¶
To create a CAP Alert access the CAP composing interface from the explorer menu as below and add a new cap alert page:
Sections in the Alert Page and corresponding XML¶
The overall Document Object Model of an alert is as below:
Alert Identification¶
It contains the following entities required for a valid CAP message:
Sender ID(sender),
Sent Dat/Time (sent),
Message Status (status),
Message Type (msgType),
Scope(scope),
Restriction (restriction),
Addresses (addresses),
Note (note),
Reference IDs (references) and
Incident ids (incidents).
The alert identifier is generated automatically and is not editable.
Note
Some fields are visible based on selection of different parameters.
Alert Information¶
Corresponds to the <info> element in the CAP message. The
A CAP message expects at least one <info> element to be present. Multiple <info> blocks should all have the
same <category> and <event> element values.
Each Information block contains the following elements:
Langauge (langauge
Event Category/Categories (category)
Event Type (event)
Response Type/Types (responseType)
Urgency (urgency)
Severity (severity)
Certainty (certainty)
Audience (audience)
Event Code/Codes (eventCode)
Effective Date/Time (effective)
Onset Date/Time (onset)
Expiration Date/Time (expires)
Sender Name (senderName)
Headline(headline)
Event description (description)
Instructions (instruction)
Information URL (web),
Contact Info (contact) and
Parameter/Parameters(parameter)
Alert Area¶
Information Entity that defines the geographic area to be notified. Multiple areas can be defined in the alert. Each area contains the following elements:
Area Description (areaDesc),
Area Polygon/Polygons (polygon),
Area Circle/Circles (circle),
Area Geocode/Geocodes (geocode),
Altitude (altitude),
Ceiling (ceiling)
The Alert area input has 4 selector options:
Admin Boundary (area is picked from predefined boundaries). To use this option, ensure that admin boundaries are initially loaded. Refer to Setting up boundaries section.
Polygon (drawing a polygon)
Circle (drawing a circle which specifies the latitude, longitude and radius)
Geocode (specifying area geocode name and value). Using this option presumes knowleged of the coding system
Alert Resource¶
Entity that defines supplemental information related to an
Description (resourceDesc), MIME Type (mimeType), File Size (size), URI (uri), Dereferenced URI (derefUri) and Digest (digest)**
The Alert resource input has 2 selector options:
File resource (takes in a file and description)
External resource
Additional CAP Inputs¶
Addition alert information elements include parameters and event codes
Incidents¶
This defines the reference incident to the current alert, if any.
CAP Settings¶
CAP Settings include sender name, sender identifier, contact details, hazard types and audience types.
Note
The creation of Hazard types will change the event input under alert information to a dropdown.
Setting up boundaries¶
The boundary manager allows for the addition of boundaries to be used in the creation of an alert area using the admin boundary option.
To access it, click on the boundary manager in the explorer menu as below and select Admin boundary settings to select the boundary data source and country/countries of interest. You will then need to add boundary data for the countries selected:
Select the ‘boundary data source’ where you will download the boundaries. The current options are:
OCHA Administrative Boundary common Operational Datasets (COD-ABS) (default) https://data.humdata.org/
Global Administrative Areas 4.1 (GADM) https://gadm.org/download_country.html
Add one or more countries
To add boundary data, access the menu as below and click on ‘Add Boundary’ button:
Load country boundaries at each of different levels (level 0 to 4) in zipped shapefile format
Note
Zip shapefiles seperately by Admin level before upload.