The consortium is pleased to announce the formation of the OASIS Emergency Interoperability (EI) Member Section. This new group will work to accelerate the development, adoption, application, and implementation of emergency interoperability and communications standards. The Member Section will represent and serve the needs of all constituents in the marketplace; practitioners, technology providers, and national, international and multinational oversight agencies are all strongly encouraged to join this effort.

The EI Member Section will oversee the work of the OASIS Emergency Management (EM) Technical Committee, which produces information exchange standards that advance incident preparedness and response to emergency situations. Founded in January 2003, the TC's accomplishments include the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) Distribution Element and the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) OASIS Standards, both of which are widely used in the emergency community. The Member Section also welcomes suggestions for forming new Committees to address other issues related to emergency interoperability.

The Steering Committee for the EI Member Section will include David Lamendsdorf, David Aylward, and Tracy Ryan of the Emergency Interoperability Consortium, Elysa Jones of Warning Systems (chair of the OASIS EM TC), and Dr. Donald Ponikvar of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Future Steering Committee elections will be held annually.

All interested parties are invited to participate in the EI Member Section.

It costs OASIS members nothing extra to get involved in this work. Please review the MS web site or contact member-services@oasis-open.org for more information.

Emergency Interoperability Member Section: http://www.oasis-emergency.org/

Emergency TC: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/emergency

Join the MS: http://www.oasis-emergency.org/join