ORLANDO— The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC), located within the Science and Technology Directorate, demonstrated for the first time, the interoperability of information-sharing products enabled by the full suite of new Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) standards.  Presented to the emergency response community at this week’s annual International Association of Emergency Managers’ Annual Conference in Orlando, Fl., OIC used a simulated emergency situation to showcase the enhanced response capabilities of products utilizing these standards and the value to the practitioner and, ultimately, the public.

“The creation of the EDXL suite of standards is a breakthrough in standards development and capability,” said Dr. David Boyd, Director of the Command, Control and Interoperability Division. “They will improve the capabilities and success of emergency responders daily, and CCI is proud to have participated on their development.”

This demonstration exhibited the entire suite of EDXL standards in alignment with the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Information Exchange Package Documentation. Created and adopted in the past few years in partnership with practitioner and federal partners, these standards are now being implemented into products and made available to those who need them most—an asset to the management of disasters. Open, non-proprietary and available at no cost, EDXL standards create a new approach to standards use and deployment. Available for reuse as needed, the standards leverage existing efforts and protocols, creating tools scalable from the local level to the federal level as needed. They enhance current infrastructures and systems without extensive updates, upgrades, training or costs, and bridge the gap between the “Past and the Future” of incident response and management.

The suite of EDXL standards includes:

• Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Version 1.1 provides the ability to exchange all-hazard emergency alerts, notifications, and public warnings, which can be disseminated simultaneously over many different devices and warning systems (e.g., computer systems, wireless, alarms, TV, radio).
• Distribution Element (DE) provides a flexible message-distribution framework for data sharing in emergency information systems. Messages may be distributed by specific recipients, by a geographic area, or by other codes such as agency type (police, fire, etc.).
• Hospital Availability Exchange (HAVE) specifies a document format that allows the communication of the status of a hospital, its services, and resources, including bed capacity and availability, emergency department status, and available service coverage.  This assists hospital coordination and routing of patients to the right facilities for care during emergencies
• Resource Messaging (RM 1.0) describes a suite of standard XML messages for data sharing among emergency and other information systems that deal in requesting and providing emergency equipment, supplies, people, and teams.  RM provides a total of 16 individual standard messages providing the capability for disparate systems to perform “transactional messaging” such as a Request for Resources and Response to Request for Resources.

OIC’s demonstration of the EDXL suite of standards introduced the practitioner community to the real-world implementation of products enabled by these standards, and the resulting capabilities in emergency response management. Capabilities include the sharing of information among emergency responder agencies for purposes such as providing alerts and warnings, requesting and tracking resources, sharing situational awareness, and other emergency information.  The demonstration illustrated a true system of information sharing with 11 different vendor systems sharing information seamlessly in an interoperable fashion.

For more information, contact: John S. Verrico Spokesman, Science & Technology Directorate U.S. Department of Homeland Security Phone: 202-254-2385