Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

Rick Wimberly’s Emergency Management blog identifies the fact that I stated that IPAWS-OPEN could make international connections. BUT………
U.S. regulations make inter-nation connectivity fairly difficult, if not impossible, unless there are treaties and/or formal diplomatic agreements in place. So, it can work with Canada where we have both agreements in place and a real need for cross-border civilian population alerting. With other nations… not so much. Just a clarification.

IPAWS at NAB

Spent April 10-15 in Las Vegas at the Annual National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual convention. What a huge event! And what a success for IPAWS! We showed that you can write CAP messages using a variety of input software and they can be auto-delivered by the IPAWS aggregator prototype (DM-OPEN) to an wide variety of Emergency Alert System (EAS) Broadcast devices, radios (to include NOAA weather radios), and specialized software of many kinds. I was even auto-tweeting the headlines of CAP messages retreived from the aggregator. It all works folks. Kudos to the whole team: IPAWS folks, vendors, and broadcasters. We are on our way.

The Fiscal Year 2010 “Interoperable Communications Grant Program, Guidance and Application Toolkit” has just been published. My first question on seeing the grant language was, Did they mandate real interoperable data standards for software purchased using grant money?

They did. From Page 20:

Grant-funded systems, developmental activities, or services related to emergency response information sharing should conform as much as possible with the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) suite of data messaging standards and National Incident Management System (NIMS) guidelines. Additional information on data messaging standards and their applicability may be found at www.oasis-open.org. The NIMS Supporting Technology Evaluation Program (NIMS STEP) provides objective evaluations of commercial software and hardware products, and reports on product conformity to standards and NIMS guidelines. Findings from evaluations may be accessed through the Responder Knowledge Base (RKB) website to assist grantees in making purchases. More information on the NIMS STEP can be found at https://www.rkb.us/contentdetail.cfm?content_id=219711.

And Again from page 28 under Technology:

National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). FEMA requires all grantees to use the latest NIEM specifications and guidelines regarding the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) for all grant awards. Further information about the required use of NIEM specifications and guidelines is available at http://www.niem.gov.

NIEM is XML. EDXL is XML. What gives? Who has precedence? Why is EDXL mentioned in the Funding Restrictions section and NIEM in the Administrative Requirements section?

In reality, you can ignore the apparent confusion. The requirements are valid and complimentary. For the most part, EDXL standards are accepted by NIEM as “approved external standards.” So you do not violate the NIEM requirements by using them, provided you use them as-is, in their entirety. If you use use individual elements (or a subset of elements) from an EDXL schema) in a way that does not validate against one of the schema standards, you are actually violating both EDXL and NIEM unless you document the use of those elements using the formal NIEM Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) methodology as defined at niem.gov. So if you want to use a system that uses EDXL-Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), EDXL- Distribution Element (EDXL-DE), EDXL-Resource Messaging (EDXL-RM), and/or EDXL-Hospital Availability (EDXL-HAVE), go ahead. You are within the terms of the grant language. But if you modify (aka “improve”) the standards in any way, you must go through a formal IEPD process.

If, however you have requirements for information exchange that are not met by existing standards, NIEM offers you the opportunity to reuse existing NIEM IEPDs, build a new IEPD from existing NIEM data definition resources, or build an IEPD from a combination of data definition resources. It is a well-defined process that is designed to maximize reuse and minimize redundancy in data structure definitions supporting emergency management dat exchange requirements.

So, to summarize, if the software you are considering for purchase/development with your grant money reuses EDXL Exchange Standards and/or NIEM IEPDs, you are home free. If not, the system needs to define its exchanges with other systems following NIEM IEPD development rules as found at NIEM.gov

The link below is to a blog entry by Rick Wimberly concerning all of the alerting systems shown at the IAEM conference in Orlando this week.

http://www.emergencymgmt.com/emergency-blogs/alerts/The-Best-Notification-System.html

The basic premise is that there is no “best” alerting system and that the best alerting system is system of systems for alerting purposes that each have different traits and capabilities. I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY. In fact, the activity where I currently work, FEMA’s Disaster Management Open Platform for Emergency Networks (DM-OPEN), is designed to allow communication between different alerting systems, such that they work together as a system of systems. At the IAEM conference, 10 different systems were using DM-OPEN to share the alerting function and it worked well because all were using the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol as a basis for exchange.

DM-OPEN also showed the ability of multiple systems to share OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language Distribution Element (EDXL-DE) wrapped content. This content included NIEM IEPD Content (Amber Alerts) and OASIS Hospital Availability, but could also have included any defined data structure known to parties on at least two ends of the exchange. So, does this make DM-OPEN the best emergency information network? I might want to think so, but my thoughts are actually similar to Rick’s. I believe that no single network solution can legitimately call itself the best. Instead, it takes a constantly improving “network of networks” in combination to provide emergency managers with the best information available. In this arena, DM-OPEN does have a place. Because DM-OPEN connectivity is based on publicly available standards, it can connect network to network, as well as system to system as long as those systems are open to standards-based connectivity. So, DM-OPEN is not THE network or THE system. But if anyone else tells you theirs is THE solution, I would say they are blowing smoke, and that they need to learn to work with others.

Respectfully,
Gary “Grandpa” Ham

Attended combined NIEM National Training Event and Oasis Interoperability Summit in Baltimore last week. What a week!!

All of the following Items are from that event:
1. Participated in live demonstrations of interoperability by 11 separate commercial vendors, all using the DM-OPEN Backbone. Messages included Common Alerting Protocol sent from an actual Chorine sensor, NWS Tornado Warnings in CAP with the full polygon showing on maps used by multiple vendors, EDXL-DE wrapped Hospital Availability Messages, and EDXL-DE wrapped NIEM Amber Alert Messages, with accompanying Style sheet and reference base-64 encoded picture data used in full display. A professional videographer filmed the demonstration activities and interviewed key players. The edited video will be made available by OASIS. I will post the link when it is available.
2. Moderated NIEM NTE panel titled “Coordinating the Development and Adoption of Emergency Data Standards With the Ongoing Development of NIEM.” A format of 5 separate questions with short answer to each question by all panel members in turn was well received, both by the panel and the audience. Answers were lively and interesting. There were many audience questions as well. The NIEM organization recorded all panel sessions, so this panel will be available for review in its entirety.
3. Acted as a panel member in a second NIEM NTE panel titled: “Playing Well With Others”—NIEM and External Standards. This was a half session panel that stirred lots of interest and did not afford adequate time for all audience questions. Its recording will also be made available by the NIEM organization. Both panels made is clear that there is real cooperation between standards bodies and progress is being made to ensure that the value of all standards is recognized as a federation real capabilities. While some technical and “turf” issues need to be understood better, the folks involved look forward to the future with a positive attitude and a real belief in success.

Special Thanks to Donna Roy (NIEM Director) and her crew for a great event, and to Bill Kalin (Contractor to DHS Science and Tecnology) and Jane Harnad (OASIS) for organizing a superb demonstration and to all of the vendors for showing real interoperability in action. Standards do work!!!

DM-OPEN in particular is designed to be a great enabler for NIEM and NIEM based messaging. DM-OPEN is based on the EDXL-Distribution Element (DE) which is a NIEM approved external standard for “packaging” content for distribution. The following link is to a recorded presentation from 19 August 2009 (last week) to the DM-OPEN Special Interest Group SIG. This recorded presentation is from a live demonstration of the use of DM-OPEN to transport NIEM IEPD defined content from an originator to a separate display application. It also shows how (when a NIEM IEPD also has the associated style sheet that is now part of NIEM IEPD requirements) that the NIEM content and is associated presentation can be shipped in the same message to recipients. The recording is 40 minutes long. The recording is a little rough in spots, but the content is both illustrative and thought provoking.
http://www.disasterhelp.gov/disastermanagement/library/archive/open/090819present.wmv

The new DM-OPEN (out this fall) will be even more useful as it will allow queries using NIEM compatible keyword and type structures within the DE’s ValueListURN structure (a categorization scheme for metadata about message content). This will make retrieval and re-distribution of NIEM Content more practical and more efficient for DM-OPEN participant applications.

A raw demonstration of a very usable capability.

The DE offers implementers a unique opportunity: the ability to send message content within one contentObject tag and an XSLT for displaying that content in the originator’s desired format in another, all within the same message. On Wednesday August 19, I will demonstrate how this works on line to the DM-OPEN Special Interest Group (SIG) at noon Eastern Time via Microsoft Live Meeting. I will retrieve a DE created by the folks at Evolution Technologies from DM-OPEN, and then display it in a browser as the sender intends it to be seen. This is brand new to me so I will not have written all of the code to do it all “automagically.” (I may have it done by then but do not promise.) So, you will have to put up with some cut-and paste and manual file creation, but I will be doing it live so you can see the process and visualize for yourself how you might automate it in your system. And guess what? The content is from a NIEM IEPD.

(I sure hope I do not have a Bill Gates Moment! )

Here are some Live Meeting Instructions and the call-in information:

IMPORTANT: If you have not logged into Live Meeting before, check out the following connection instructions and participant guidelines prior to next week’s meeting: http://www.disasterhelp.gov/disastermanagement/library/documents/LiveMtgInstruct.pdf

(1) Login to MS Live Meeting for visuals: The following login link can only be used 30 minutes prior to the scheduled meeting time:

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/eiip/join?id=DMprogram&role=attend

(2) Call into the Conference Bridge number as follows: 1 (800)366-7242; Pin 3647 6736#.

I received e-mail asking about my ideas for incorporating external structures like IEEE 1512 or Cursor on Target (Cot) into NIEM.  I think my response may be of general interest:

I am not a believer in the “incorporation of external structures like 1512 or Cot in NIEM.”  The cost of merging the maintenance  and update process of multiple separate standards related organizations would be too high. The resulting governance process would induce such brittleness that progress would simply stop.   I am, however, a believer in using external standards in the IEPD process and in the use of external standards on their own when and wherever they make sense.  Developing a brand new NIEM structure to replace a well-defined standard that is already in use is ludicrous.  And I believe that the NIEM management team agrees with me when I say that.

There are actually four cases to consider that involve the use of external standards:

1. The external standard meets the mission of an IEPD on its own. In this case just use it.  Document it as the content of the exchange and do not spend time trying to “NIEMify” its content. (Examples are CAP1.1 and perhaps some of 1512).

2. The external standard is used to “wrap” NIEM content (likely case for EDXL-DE and Cot).  In this case again the standard is simply used to wrap a NIEM IEP (as defined in an IEPD for content).  There is no need to add the external standard elements into the internal content IEPD process.  The content IEPD should define how the external standard(s) could be used as a wrapping for transport, but that is different than defining the content itself and should be encapsulated in an entirely separate section of the IEPD from the content definition.

3. The external standard contains components that need to be used in an IEPD in combination with NIEM components (GML, KML, and perhaps 1512 are examples).  It would seem that we could simply add the appropriate namespace origin and mix them into our exchange schema with the content from a NIEM extension schema.  The problem here is that representations of these components are almost guaranteed to violate NIEM Naming and Design Rules (NDR).  For example: Even a simple type such as xsd:string must be converted to a nc:TextType, which is in turn a niem-xsd:string that acts as a proxy for the XSD type but adds an optional set of attributes to the string.  So, even a simpleType from schema becomes a complexType in NIEM.   Luckily, there is an out in the NDR called the adapter. An adapter is a simple, single element wrapper that is used in NIEM to contain the external component. It is defined in the NIEM NDR as follows:  “An adapter type is a NIEM conformant type that adapts external components for use within NIEM.  An adapter type creates a new class of object that embodies a single concept composed of external components.  A NIEM conformant schema defines an adapter type.” It basically adds the attributes at the adapter level that are needed for NIEM conformance without fussing with the representations and naming issues of its contained content.  An adapter can contain:
a) an entire external schema (assuming it wraps the root element type)
b) a complex component element type from a schema
c) a single type from the schema.
The use of adapters is described in section 7-7 of the NIEM NDR.  Serious users of NIEM should read the NDR in its entirety.  The final point on this discussion is very simple.  You do not incorporate an external structure into NIEM, but you can define a NIEM conformant adapter in your IEPD as a container for that external structure that will allow you to import the external structure “as-is.”

4. The NIEM is not complete and needs extension. There are concepts that are needed in NIEM that may exist in external standards already.  In this case the concepts (but not the standards themselves) actually do need to be “incorporated” into NIEM.  So, how do we bring in the concept without creating a duplication of the external standard?  We could “coordinate” with the external standards organization(s), each of which have their own representation for the concept. This is indeed a hard task, and creates brittleness in and out of NIEM.  It can be done to some extent, but it is not a good idea to put it into any form of formal governance.  The cost is just too high.  Luckily, NIEM already provides a workable solution: the use of Abstract Elements with Multiple Representations already exists for dates and units of measure.  This is extended to the use of external namespaces for code lists.  Why not do the exact same thing for concepts that originate in an external standard?
a) Bring in the concept.  Name and define it in accordance with NIEM NDR.
b) Identify the Concept as an abstract element with multiple representations.
c) Identify one of the representations as the one in the external standard using the external standard’s namespace. The NDR may require that it be wrapped in a single element Adapter.
d) Identify a NIEM compliant and/or other standard representations as appropriate.
This avoids the duplication of concept and organizes multiple representations of the concept in a manner that that both controls those representations and makes translation between representations easier to accomplish. Yet it does not induce “coupling” between NIEM and other standards organizations. The separation remains clear and clean.

Note: Items 1, 2, and 3 on this list are already in place as how you should work with NIEM.  I put them in this message as a way of organizing the different issues that may be in play. Number 4 is new.  It is a combination of my recent completion of the on-line Practical Implementer’s course for NIEM and discussions with FEMA’s Emergency management domain lead and a couple of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) representatives at the recent NIEM Business Architecture Council meeting in Baltimore.  I have also had off-line discussion with FEMA technical representatives and members of the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee.

A final note: Although they do conform to the NDR, not everyone likes adapters. They add one more tag to an already deep chain of tags in a NIEM compliant schema.  They allow the use of non-NIEM content (although it is content that is recognized by NIEM).  My take is that adapters make cooperation between NIEM and the external standards bodies possible without the intense combined governance that could have a negative impact on progress on all sides.

I have been studying the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) fairly extensively over the last few weeks. I have even read the NIEM Naming and Design Rules document from beginning to end. I will admit that I went into it with something of a jaundiced view.  As a veteran contributor to the DoD data model and an outside observer of the GJXDM (recently), and a large scale IBM model (a long time ago), I have real reservations about the usability and maintainability of any all-knowing, all-seeing model.  I have, at least at this point, become a believer in NIEM.  Why?   Because NIEM accepts the notion that a federation between separately name-spaced models makes sense, both within NIEM, and with external standards defined outside the heavy NIEM NDR discipline (or defined with a different heavy discipline).   The notion of defining an Adapter for NIEM use of other standards is a brilliant concept.  This, combined with the Information Exchange Package Documentation (IEPD) methodology for documenting the contextual use of data used in exchanges has made me a fan.

The problem with this “federation of standards” concept is that it makes tools (and “auto-magic” validation) harder to build.  As a result there is a tendency to try and force all of the standards back into the all-knowing, all-seeing model. It is a seductive idea, but not a good idea.  Let’s look at a very simple example: EDXL Resource Management uses the Customer Information Quality (CIQ standard) for Person Names. This allows internationalization for all kinds of different Naming structures and for a wide variety of Addressing schemes.  NIEM (as a national model) is much more U.S. centric, particularly in the use of PersonName tag. Both CIQ and NIEM are appropriate in their respective namespaces (and the NIEM NDR respects this fact by allowing for the adapter wrapper for external standards).   If we try to combine the two standards by defining CIQ elements as NIEM elements directly in order to make the subschema generator work more easily, we blur important distinctions that were developed for good reason.

So, we need to use NIEM IEPD methods. They are excellent. But we must resist the desire to force single definitions for concepts that may appear to be the same, but actually differ due to the context in which they were defined.  In other words, do not force a merger of conceptual domains, unless they actually are the same.  NIEM lets us federate in the building of an IEPD.   We should take advantage of that capability.

I wrote a little ditty that explains the value of what FEMA’s Disaster management program offers to vendors, open source developers and even contract developers in the Emergency Management and Public Warning Domains. It is a question that users of such software might ask their vendors. Take a look.
See my Contact Info if you would like some help getting started

Are you OPEN? [1]

Can you connect using standards?
Are you open to all?
Or are you a silo?
Using “standards” to stall?

Our open web service
Connects all kinds of apps.
A middleware instance
To share more than “CAPs.”[2]

We have a web service
Based on EDXL [3]
That helps apps connect
Yet encapsulate well.

Hard wired integration
Is not what we do.
You connect via service
As captured by you.

You decide layout
And your design form
But connect to all others
Using standards as norm.

We make it straightforward.
Your connection is clean.
The boundaries work well.
You control what is seen.

You have the power.
We provide pipes,
For transferring data
Of all defined types.

With data described
Using DE [4]
So intelligent routing
Can come to be.

We provide access.
You set the rules
In the tags that you set
In the DE through your tools.

We then connect others
As desired by you.
And they get your data
As you want them to.

They can format the layout
In their own way.
Connected, yet separate
With their own say

Into how to display
And how to reuse
And so can all others
Unless you refuse.

You can work independent,
Yet use standards to share.
The best choice to ensure
Service to all; everywhere.

Gary A. Ham – May 14, 2009

[1] FEMA – Disaster Management Program – Open Platform for Emergency Networks
[2] OASIS Common Alerting Protocol
[3] OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language
[4] OASIS EDXL Distribution Element