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.