The '''Common Alerting Protocol''' (CAP) is an [[XML]]-based data format for exchanging emergency [[AMBER Alert|alerts]] and [[Emergency population warning|public warnings]] amongand emergencies differentbetween alerting technologies. CAP allows a consistent warning message to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over many different warning systems to many different applications,. inorder toCAP increaseincreases warning effectiveness and simplifysimplifies the warningtask activationof taskactivating a warning for responsible officials.
Individuals can receive standardized alerts from variousmany sources and configure their applications to process and respond to the alerts as desired. Alerts from the [[United States Geological Survey]], the [[Department of Homeland Security]], and [[NOAA]] can all be received in the same format, can be received by the same application, and. thatThat application can, for example, sound different alarms based on the information received.
By normalizing alert data across threats, jurisdictions and warning systems, CAP also can be used in the detectionto ofdetect trends and patterns in local warning activity, such as trends that might indicate an undetected hazard or hostile act. From a procedural perspective, CAP reinforces a research-based template for effective warning message content and structure.
The CAP data structure is backward-compatible with existing alert formats including the [[Specific Area Message Encoding]] (SAME) used in [[NOAA Weather Radio|Weatheradio]] and the broadcast [[Emergency Alert System]], while adding capabilities including:
