Congratulations to GISC Seoul and GISC Melbourne on their becoming operational from 29 March 2013 and 16 April 2013 respectively.
GISC Seoul will be joining GISCs Beijing and Tokyo in providing interim metadata management services for centres whose Principal GISC is not yet operational. See Bureau media release
GISC Melbourne is running its first Workshop for its users from 29 April to 3 May. See Announcement on WIS News.
Links to all GISCs are available at http://www.wmo.int/giscs.

RA-V Workshop on the Implementation of WMO Information System (WIS)

and Table Driven Code Form (TDCF), 29 April – 3 May 2013

Melbourne, Australia

With partnership funding from AusAID Pacific Public Sector Linkage Program (PSLP) for Pacific Island Countries and contributions from WMO and Australian Bureau of Meteorology for participation of other RA V Member countries

Objectives

This workshop is aimed to assist South-West Pacific Member countries in WMO Regional Association V (RA V) and counterpart National Meteorological and Hydrometeorological Services (NMHS) in this region to develop the capacity for fully participating in WMO Information System (WIS) and to adopt the new reporting formats required in the migration to Table Driven Code Form (TDCF) for the exchange of observed and predicted weather data and products.

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Contacts: w.qu@bom.gov.au or k.wong@bom.gov.au

Dear Colleagues,

We wish to bring to your attention the following two Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) Workshops:

1. "CAP Implementation Workshop", 23-24 April 2013; and
2. "CAP Jump-Start Workshop", 25 April 2013.

The CAP Implementation Workshop is co-sponsored by WMO, in collaboration with the Organization for Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). WMO is organizing the CAP Jump-Start Workshop. Further information concerning the workshop has now been posted on the WMO PWS Website, and can be accessed at the following web address: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/amp/pwsp/CAP_2013_en.htm.

BACKGROUND ON CAP

CAP is an OASIS standard adopted as ITU-T Recommendation X.1303. It is a simple and general format for emergency alerting and public warning. It is designed for "all-hazards", addressing weather events, earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes, public health, power outages, and many other emergencies. CAP is also designed for "all-media", addressing communications media ranging from sirens to cell phones, faxes, radio, television, and various digital communication networks including the Internet.
The standard CAP format enables consistent alerts for any kind of emergency simultaneously over many different alerting systems, thus increasing effectiveness while simplifying the alerting task. CAP also facilitates the detection of emerging patterns in local alerts of various kinds.
WMO, ITU, and others are promoting CAP as the foundation standard for public alerting in societies worldwide. Different alerting authorities, intermediaries, and alerting user groups are implementing CAP in operational applications. As CAP messages become available from many different sources, implementers should harmonize how they implement CAP to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of systems within and across nations. For more about CAP, see the 10-minute WMO video online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0iKp60jjtY.

You are encouraged to visit the website periodically for updates, and it is hope that you would participate in the areas of the programme you may find of interest to you. Please let us know should you need further information. In the meantime please note that a formal memo will be sent out nearer to the dates of the workshops.

Best regards,


Samuel W. Muchemi
Public Weather Services (PWS)
World Meteorological Organization
7 bis, avenue de la Paix
CH-1211 GENEVE 2,
SWITZERLAND
Tel: +41-22-730-8137
Email: SMuchemi@wmo.int

An international WIS workshop was held from 26-30 Jan 2013 in Doha/Qatar.
The workshop, jointly organized by Qatar Meteorological Department and the WMO Secretariat, focused on WIS National Centre and Data Collection and/or Production Centre implementation and the understanding and migration to WMO Table Driven Code Forms. It also discussed an implementation plan for a regional Marine Centre.

GISC Seoul is hosting its first GISC International WIS Workshop at Jeju, in the Republic of Korea, 6 to 9 Novermber 2012. See invitation here or contact your International Affairs Office or Training Focal Point for details.

The WIS centre database has been updated for those centres functioning as Regional Climate Centres as defined in the Manual on GDPFS that have registered in WIS. This is a step towards aligning the Manual on WIS with the description methodology being proposed in the Manual on GDPFS updated in 16 May 2012.

Discovery Metadata from WIS will be made available through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) from 13 July 2012. See WMO News 12 July 2012 for more details.

Congratulations to GISC Exeter and GISC Toulouse on their becoming operational from 15 June 2012. Links to all GISCs are available at www.wmo.int/giscs. GISC Exeter and Toulouse join GISC Offenbach as the three nodes of the West European VGISC serving WMO Members and partners across most of WMO Region VI.

To follow the RMDCN Replacement Project Workshop visit the meeting page at http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/WIS/wiswiki/tiki-index.php?page=RMDCN_TT_Meeting_2012 and follow the link to the meeting Webcast.

The WMO No.1060 The Manual on the WMO Information System - 2012 (is now available in all official WMO languages. See English; Arabic; French; Spanish; Russian; Chinese
.