Re: [earlywarning] [CAP] Definition of Warning Categories

[Rex Buddenberg <budden at nps.navy.mil>]

On Mon, 2009-07-13 at 13:25 -0400, David Aylward (Comcare) wrote:
> Rex:
> 
> Very insightful comments.  Certainly you are pointing in the right
> direction.  Many of us are working with alliances to make sure that safety
> uses are part of this stimulus.  The law and regulations call for safety to
> be part of the mix.  

In the FCC's NOI, there are a plethora of worthy applications.  Let's
pick on just a couple: education and schools always makes such a list.
And reach to rural has several sub-worthies including remote health
care, education, etc.  

Now look at the problem asking the questions 'what makes emergency
services different?'
	- the geographic coverage for 'reach to rural' and 'reach to emergency
services' is about the same
	- the driving requirement for emergency services is high availability.
This requirement makes 'emergency services broadband' a superset of all
the others.  
	- security (the FCC's NOI uses the term 'privacy').  And I'd point out
that authenticity is more important than privacy (you ever been
knee-deep in a situation and watched the rumor mill take off?).  The
point here is that these requirements belong in applications (like CAP)
and not in the comms plumbing.  


> 
> However, our enthusiasm should be tempered a bit by the emphasis the
> recently issued rules make for use of the funds.  With a relatively small
> amount of money (a one time shot of $7 billion is small potatoes compared to
> something like $35-40 billion annually in industry capex), many of us had
> hoped that the rules would leverage this one time investment by focusing on
> building integrated demand, i.e. get safety, healthcare, etc sharing
> information and thus using broad band more and more.  

My observation is that both emergency services and schools need
internet.  But every place I've looked, both are on different planning
tracks.  

> 
> However, the predominant designated use for the first tranche of the
> stimulus funds (only 1/3 of the NTIA amount) is digging trenches for fiber
> into rural America. Nothing inherently wrong with that if someone has a
> future business model to support the capex.   

One of the guys I discuss this stuff with is in a western state where
there's miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.  His primary
concern is to provide coverage, both for emergency services and
motorists along the interstate highway that runs through the state.
Hmmm ... the highway runs parallel to the railroad and guess where the
trenches have already been dug and filled with dark fiber?  

Part of the problem is indeed capitalization expense, but that's at
least equaled by the need to get hitherto stovepipe comms industries
working together ... to extend the internet.  You can see the problem in
action by looking at the NPSTC working groups ... they immediately
equated 'broadband' with 'LTE', naively ignoring what the CATV companies
call 'broadband internet'-).  


> 
> But the problem in the safety/healthcare eco-system is not primarily access
> to IP communications trunks, but application layer capability and
> interoperability issues.  Part of the first part of the stimulus funds are
> devoted to "Innovative and sustainable uses of broadband".   Hopefully more
> will be in the future.  

David, you're right on target worrying about the sustainability (or at
least who you quoted is).  What doesn't make economic sense is to extend
the internet to those miles and miles ... twice.  Once for emergency
services and once for something else.  What makes a lot more sense is an
anchor tenant agreement that 1) meets the emergency services needs and
2) allows the commercial vendor to sell capacity above that
commercially.  

(apologies to Art et al for highjacking the CAP list)

> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cap-list-bounces at lists.incident.com
> [mailto:cap-list-bounces at lists.incident.com] On Behalf Of Rex Buddenberg
> Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 12:55 PM
> To: Bob Robinson
> Cc: IAEM List; EM Groups; earlywarning at ietf.org; cap-list at incident.com; Art
> Botterell
> Subject: Re: [CAP] Definition of Warning Categories
> 
> Bob,
> 
> You point into a very interesting parallel development out there in the
> world.
> 
> In the stimulus bill last spring was $7.2B in grant money that went to
> USDA ('broadband' and 'reach to rural') and NTIA in Commerce
> ('broadband' and 'reach to underserved').  The FCC was also charged with
> drafting a 'national broadband plan'.  
> 	FCC published a Notice of Inquiry, for which the comment period just
> closed last week.  About the first comment they sought was a definition
> of 'broadband'.  (For paper coming from inside the beltway, this NOI is
> pretty good stuff, IMHO).  Whatever your definition of broadband, you
> can look behind it and see 'extension of the internet'.  And you should
> recognize that extension of internet to rural and extension of internet
> to emergency services has a whole lot of overlap.  
> 	Just to complete the federal nethead - bellhead list of players, DHS
> and DoJ are still in circuit-switch.  ... and didn't get this batch of
> grant money.
> 
> 
> What you ought to get out of this is is that
> 	- emergency services vehicles will soon be routinely on the
> internet.
> 	- the citizenry that emergency services exists to serve will
> increasingly be on the internet.
> 	This observation is progressively true in any event -- the netheads
> always win -- but the stimulus subsidies are probably going to be a
> substantial accelerant.... Santa Ana winds behind a California
> wildfire.  
> 
> 
> On Sun, 2009-07-12 at 17:50 -0700, Bob Robinson wrote:
> > Art,
> > 
> > Very good analysis.  In fact I think the question of user (consumer)
> disconnect can be put to the broader field of general emergency management
> communications and in fact it can be a very important part of any attempt to
> build "standards" that are to be applied across groups/agencies/etc.
> involved in emergency management.  But what  the heck, that's just my
> nickels worth based on 25+ years of EM experience.
> > 
> > Bob Robinson
> > 
> > --- On Sun, 7/12/09, Art Botterell <acb at incident.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > From: Art Botterell <acb at incident.com>
> > > Subject: Re: [CAP] Definition of Warning Categories
> > > To: earlywarning at ietf.org, cap-list at incident.com
> > > Date: Sunday, July 12, 2009, 2:23 PM
> > 
> > > I'm wondering whether it might be
> > > simpler, at least in the near term, to let consumers
> > > subscribe to selected sources rather than to topical
> > > categories.  That pushes the question of message
> > > authoritativeness / jurisdiction  /credibility out of
> > > the CAP infrastructure and into the larger field of
> > > inter-agency and inter-jurisidictional coordination, where
> > > it more properly belongs.
> > > 
> > > Taxonomies tend to be culturally loaded and can never be
> > > guaranteed to be complete.  Thus there's a real risk of
> > > "categorical disconnects" leading to missed alerts either
> > > because of differing interpretations of categories or of
> > > unforeseen events that don't fit our preconceived
> > > categories.  Maybe someday we'll have a reliable
> > > taxonomy of the unexpected, but right now a degree of
> > > deliberate imprecision seems to be the best we can do... and
> > > I sometimes wonder whether even that is more helpful than it
> > > is risky.
> > > 
> > > - Art
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On Jul 12, 2009, at 7/12/09 11:58 AM, Hannes Tschofenig
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I should provide a bit more feedback about the
> > > background to my question.
> > > > 
> > > > If you only set the value in the category field for
> > > the purpose of human
> > > > consumption then there is not really an
> > > interoperability issue.
> > > > 
> > > > Now, with the work on
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-rosen-sipping-cap-03
> > > > we wanted to define an event package for SIP that
> > > allows you to "subscribe"
> > > > to certain type of events: you might indicate
> > > something like location and
> > > > the type of events you are interested in.
> > > > 
> > > > Now, the semantic of the category field suddently
> > > matters. With the
> > > > individuals-to-citizen emergency services we tried to
> > > come up with a
> > > > description of the emergency services categories, see
> > > RFC 5031.
> > > > 
> > > > Ciao
> > > > Hannes
> > > 
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
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-- 
Rex Buddenberg
Naval Postgraduate School
Code IS/Bu
Monterey, Ca 93943
831/656-3576