IFRC Multi-Hazard App, WhatNow Service, & CAP Dissemination
This presentation was given by Jessica Robbins on 18 October, 2019, at the CAP Implementation Workshop in Mexico City, Mexico.
This presentation introduces how the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Global Disaster Preparedness Center (GDPC) support multi-hazard early warning and public preparedness through digital tools and services that strengthen alert dissemination and encourage early action.
The presentation highlights the IFRC/GDPC Multi-Hazard (Hazards) App, which provides preparedness information for 14+ hazard types, supports geo-targeted notifications, and can be customized by Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies to reflect local hazards and languages. It explains how the app integrates official alerts, with a strong preference for Common Alerting Protocol (CAP 1.2) feeds, enabling users to monitor multiple hazards and locations.
A core focus is the technical and operational requirements for CAP feed integration, including essential alert data elements (e.g., hazard type, polygon area, severity, urgency, certainty, validity time) and the need for clear documentation and event type mapping.
The presentation also introduces the WhatNow Service—a multilingual platform and API developed by GDPC in partnership with Google—which provides harmonized, actionable messages across 20+ hazards, multiple urgency levels, and 78 languages, supporting preparedness, response, and recovery communications at scale.
Finally, the presentation looks ahead to IFRC’s vision for an IFRC Alert Hub: an open, multi-hazard platform designed to improve access to trusted alerts from national and local sources, strengthen interoperability across systems, and help ensure early warning reaches “last mile” communities.