Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL)

The Department of Homeland Security is facilitating a process to bring together leaders of key emergency organizations which have been developing XML standards for their professions. The goal of the initiative is to coordinate the definition of requirements specifications and the content of data sets for emergency information sharing between professions. This is a unique initiative and should accelerate the use of data sharing and XML in emergency response communities.

These communities are represented in the process by leaders from the various XML data initiatives, including law enforcement, public safety, EMS, fire and rescue, emergency medicine, emergency management and transportation. These include specific pre-existing data initiatives such as the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM), the IEEE ITS Incident Management (IM or 1512) Initiative, the National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) standard recently issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and EMS groups, and 9-1-1 and related organizations.

Some of the specific tasks and deliverables of the process include:

* Introduce organizations and initiatives to each other; encourage cooperation

* Initiate and organize a methodology to compile and assimilate input received from the various constituents

* Develop a family of standard formats related to emergency information and sharing among the different professions

* Submit these to multiple trials

* Submit these to appropriate standards bodies

The process is defined as a phased approach with a number of specific tasks and responsibilities. An initial accomplishment has been the development of a draft message "header" specification to enable data sharing among emergency information systems of different kinds. Its core use is in message routing. Any properly formatted XML message (e.g. Common Alerting Protocol) can be a "payload".

The process is being facilitated by the ComCARE Alliance and supported by a wide variety of organizations, including the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC). The panel will describe the process. It will include: Gordon Fullerton, Sponsor, eGov Disaster Management Initiative; Matt Walton, Chairman of EIC; Art Botterell of incident.com, and David Aylward of the ComCARE Alliance.