HazCollect Updates

Update: April 30, 2009

• HazCollect is operational effective April 30, 2009.
• May and June will be a phase-in period.  Outreach and the required training and registration processes will be focused in the named areas.  The states of Wisconsin, Kentucky, Alaska, Hawaii, Florida and portions of Idaho and eastern Washington will lead the HazCollect phase-in during May. 
• Other states will be added starting May 26 with national availability by July 1; however, emergency managers from other areas will not be turned away because of their location.
• See the "For Government" information and registration steps below that requires two registrations:
• First: Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) registration to obtain your Collaborative Operations Group (COG) identity.  
• Second: HazCollect registration to obtain approval to use HazCollect your area of responsibility. 

April 10, 2009

• The HazCollect Mini Operational Test and Evaluation ended April 3, 2009.  The Test Review Group voted unanimously to recommend the HazCollect system proceed to Initial Operating Capability. 
• HazCollect will be phased into operation beginning April 30 with national availability of the HazCollect system to all warning authorities this summer.  Training and registration will be required and will be linked from this web page.
• FEMA and NWS will pilot from April to June a jointly developed, required training course for warning authorities (e.g., Emergency Managers) on HazCollect Principles and Non-Weather Emergency Message (NWEM) Best Practices.
• The HazCollect Principles and NWEM Best Practices training will take about 2 hours to complete and will be available online to all warning authorities after a successful pilot.
• The states of Wisconsin, Kentucky, Alaska, Hawaii, Florida and portions of Idaho and eastern Washington will lead the HazCollect phase-in this spring.  However, emergency managers from other areas will not be turned away because of their location.
• Registration for HazCollect by warning authorities is a two-step process:
• First - Disaster Management Interoperability Services (DMIS) registration is recommended now to obtain your Collaborative Operations Group (COG) identity.  
• Second - HazCollect registration is necessary before use.  Registration will be accessible from this web page on or about April 30.

January 8, 2009: The HazCollect Follow-on Operational Test and Evaluation ended December 5, 2008.  Test Trouble Reports and outstanding actions are being addressed.  Because the Information Technology (IT) security categorization of HazCollect has been raised, additional testing of security controls will occur before Initial Operating Capability (IOC) can be deployed nationally.  There may also be an additional short test prior to IOC.  We expect IOC and national availability in April 2009.  We also expect to pilot a Non-Weather Emergency Message (NWEM) training module developed jointly by FEMA and the NWS designed for emergency managers and other warning authorities by April. 

September 12, 2008.  NWS installed a backup HazCollect server at Mt. Weather and connectivity established with a DHS Data Center.  NWS and FEMA are working jointly on a Non-Weather Emergency Message (NWEM) training module designed for emergency managers and other responsible for writing and issuing NWEMs.  NWS will conduct a HazCollect Follow-on Operational Test and Evaluation from late September to December 5, 2008.  FOTE goals include

• Test the end-to-end NWEM dissemination from emergency managers' computer to NOAA Weather Radio using the DMIS emergency message creation tool and,
• Demonstrate dissemination of a NWEM from a third-party incident response system using the DM Open Platform for Emergency Networks (OPEN) interface functionality.

January 11, 2008.  In 2007, NWS and DHS went through a number of program office transfers, staff changes, physical hardware moves and resulting communications infrastructure changes.  The prudent course of action is to wait until NWS and FEMA are reasonably certain of system stability and reliability.
October 31, 2007.  The DMIS and OPEN projects have moved from DHS Office of CIO back to FEMA and server location decisions have been made. The HazCollect project has moved from its project development phase in NWS Office of Science and Technology to its Operations and Maintenance “home” in the NWS Office of CIO. The team is also addressing concerns expressed by NWS management before the system can be fully deployed, including policy issues and resolution of Test Trouble Reports.
March 30, 2007. NWS continues working with DHS to demonstrate the HazCollect Applications Program Interface (API) necessary for Commercial Off-the-Shelf and Government Off-the-Shelf systems to interface with Disaster Management (DM) Open Platform for Emergency Networks (OPEN).  To send NWEMs through HazCollect and other NWS systems, government and commercial incident management applications must interface with DM OPEN and be Common Alerting Protocol-enabled (CAP). DM OPEN enables secure data exchange for sharing emergency alerts or incident-related information through the use of standards-based messages.  There is no charge for the use of these Federal government interfaces.

January 11, 2007.    Information about, pre-requisites for, and a request for third-party system and emergency management client OPEN NWEM API functionality demonstration candidates was emailed to the Emergency Interoperability Consortium (EIC) and the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee (EM-TC) for distribution.  Interested parties that able to demonstrate and test OPEN NWEM API functionality may still respond to this request.

Emergency managers familiar with the DMIS Toolkit in California , Florida and Kentucky took part in a successful November 2006 follow-on HazCollect demonstration of the DMIS Toolkit and HazCollect server software.  The demonstration was held to ensure that the discrepancies identified during the HazCollect Operational Acceptance Test (OAT) last summer were fixed and demonstrate end-to-end HazCollect server functionalities between the DHS's DMIS NWEM Toolkit and NWS dissemination systems.   During the testing, emergency managers and NWS staff sent test messages using the DMIS Toolkit, including national test messages broadcast nationwide on NOAA All Hazards Weather Radio and other NWS dissemination systems. 

October 23, 2006. DHS released a draft of the DM OPEN NWEM API specification on September 19.  Significant progress has been made since September in testing the DM OPEN API.

October 18, 2006.   DMIS Web Services v2.3.3 was released. The release announcement listed the Non-Weather Emergency Messages (NWEM) creation tool as one of the updates/enhancements in the new DMIS version. This DMIS feature will not be available until NWS acceptance testing is complete and HazCollect declared ready for national operations.

NWS will open HazCollect registration after NWS acceptance process is complete. Registration will be accessible from this web page.