Oasis members form new group

The new committee will actively solicit participation from governments, companies and organisations around the world

Open standards consortium Oasis has formed a new group tasked with promoting the adoption of information exchange standards that aim to help improve emergency response activities.

The new Oasis Emergency Management (EM) Adoption Committee consists of government agencies, public safety organisations, associations and vendors. It will work towards encouraging the use of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and the family of Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) standards.

The EM Adoption Committee will co-ordinate its activities with the Oasis EM Technical Committee, which develops the CAP and EDXL specifications.

Governments across the globe are increasingly mandating the use of CAP and EDXL, according to Werner Joerg of IEM and Thomas Ferrentino, co-chairs of the Oasis EM Adoption Committee.

The new committee has been formed to provide a "neutral ground" for implementers and solution providers to define best practices for implementing CAP and EDXL, the standards organisation said.

"The adoption of emergency management standards, already strong in the US, is growing in the rest of the world, especially the European Union," said Laurent Liscia, executive director of Oasis.

"We're happy to see the EM Adoption Committee actively soliciting participation from governments, companies and organisations around the world. Emergencies don't recognise national boundaries; global participation in this work is essential."