On Tue, 12 Mar 2019, Michael Thomas wrote:
This seriously seems like something that needs formal standardization.
No one is paying me to work on this, so I don't plan to spend time
doing free tutorials for Amazon, Apple and Google program managers; or
money flying to standards meetings around the world.
I think, within 5 years or so, its inevitable that smart TVs and smart
speakers will support emergency alerts. The only questions is whether
the ecosystem owners do it voluntarily or it becomes mandatory.
Standards and APIs for emergency alert messages have existed for 5, 10, 15
years. Depending on which standard.
Google's non-profit arm created a global alert map using those standards
several years ago. Note the .org versus .com.
https://www.google.org/publicalerts
NOAA National Weather Service updated its API for weather alerts a couple
of years ago, making it easier to get active alerts for a specific
geographic coordinate, i.e. your house, school, etc. You no longer need
to download all the alerts in a state. Documentation on the NOAA API is
on the web site.
https://alerts-v2.weather.gov/
The FEMA API requires signing a MOU with Homeland Security to retrieve
non-weather alerts directly from IPAWS. The IPAWS API isn't intended for
end-users. However there is no limitation on companies redidstributing
those alerts. That's one source of Google.ORG's public alerts for its
map.
https://www.fema.gov/integrated-public-alert-warning-system-private-sector
Intelligent assistants already know where your smart device is located.
People even inform the intelligent assistant which room those devices are
in. There is no requirement for intelligent assistants to report that
information back to government alert originators. Its more or less a
one-way feed of alerts.
The formal standards are published by OASIS. The great thing about
standards bodies is there are so many to choose from.
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=emergency
Emergency alerts use the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) specification.