EAS EAS Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) 2

Question 1

Which standard protocol enables interoperability between WEA, EAS, and other modern public alerting systems?

Accepted Answer

Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)

Answer

CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) is the XML-based open standard that enables alerts to be formatted once and distributed across multiple platforms including WEA, EAS, and NOAA systems.

Question 2

What is the primary advantage of CAP over the older SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) EAS format?

Accepted Answer

CAP supports multilingual messages and multimedia content such as maps and images

Answer

CAP supports rich content including multilingual text, embedded URLs, geographic polygon data, and attachments, far exceeding the capabilities of the older SAME protocol.

Question 3

By what date did the FCC require EAS participants to be capable of receiving CAP-formatted alerts?

Accepted Answer

June 30, 2012

Answer

The FCC mandated that all EAS participants be capable of receiving and processing CAP-formatted alerts by June 30, 2012.

Question 4

Which organization maintains and publishes the CAP standard used in public alerting?

Accepted Answer

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)

Answer

CAP is an open international standard published and maintained by OASIS, ensuring it is not proprietary to any single government agency or vendor.

Question 5

After an alert originator submits a CAP message to IPAWS, which entity actually transmits the WEA message to mobile phones?

Accepted Answer

Participating wireless carriers

Answer

IPAWS aggregates and authenticates the alert, then distributes it to participating wireless carriers, which broadcast the WEA message via cell broadcast to devices in the target area.

EAS - Emergency Alert System Test Practice Test

EAS - Emergency Alert System Test Practice Test

EAS EAS Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) 2