Problem Statement and Requirements for Emergency Notification using Web Push
draft-nakajima-webpush-problem-statement-00

Abstract

The Web Push protocol provides a means of delivering the events to clients based on the registration made by the application. Also, the emergency alert notification system has been developed and deployed widely with mobile phones or smartphones, but has not deployed to Web-only devices.

This document outlines various existing emergency alert notification system in other protocols and use cases with their requirements.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Terminology
• 3. Problem Statement
• 3.1. Issues on existing emergency alerting system
• 3.2. Use case of Web Push Emergency Alerting Notification
• 3.3. Non-emergency, Important notification
• 4. Security Consideration
• 5. IANA Consideration
• 6. References
• 6.1. Normative References
• 6.2. Informative References
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

The delivery of real-time events such as incoming calls or messages is an essential feature of mobile application and its platform. The Web Push [I-D.thomson-webpush-http2] protocol has been proposed to enable delivering the events required by W3C Web Push API [PushAPI].

Also, emergency alerting is an apparently important feature of telecommunication network such as cellular networks, allowing the governments or authorities to send a warnings of natural disaster or accident.

This document will describe various use cases and requirements of emergency notification system using Web Push.

2. Terminology

In cases where normative language needs to be emphasized, this document back on established shorthands for expressing interoperability requirements on implementations: the capitalized words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “SHOULD” and “MAY”. The meaning of these is described in [RFC2119].

3. Problem Statement

3.1. Issues on existing emergency alerting system

This section describes the survey and issues of existing emergency alerting system.

In the cellular network, several emergency alerting mechanisms have been proposed and merged into Public Warning System(PWS) [_3GPP.22.268]. PWS provides several functions for example:

• Able to broadcast Warning notifications to multiple devices simultaneously.
• Able to broadcast Warning notifications based on geographical information.
• Provides reliable, secure delivery of Warning notification over 3GPP system.

Addition to PWS, some work has been made to distribute the emergency alerting notification on different network. In the WiFi network, IEEE 802.11u [IEEE80211u] has an emergency support which uses Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) [CAP]. Also, Atoca WG has worked for defining the secure alerting format to broadcast CAP-based alert over IP network.

Those previous contributions have been made to develop the method to distribute an emergency alerting notification. However, those systems require a specific access network such as 3GPP or WiFi. There is an issue that desktop device or device not equipped with 3GPP or WiFi is not able to receive an emergency alerting notification.

The second issue is geolocation-aware system. A major emergency alert such as an earthquake or a tsunami is distributed at geolocation specific area based on the cellular cell or WiFi cell. Web Push relies on HTTP/2 [I-D.ietf-httpbis-http2] which relies on IP network. Geofencing [Geofencing] is discussed in W3C Geolocation WG to let the application to interact with the loose location-aware computation without knowing device’s exact location. However, geofencing needs device’s support, Web Push emergency alerting notification system has to have a mechanism to detect device’s location to send a location specific alerts.

3.2. Use case of Web Push Emergency Alerting Notification

There are two potential use case of Web Push Emergency Alerting notification.

The first use case is a Web-based Signage. Digital signage has widely deployed among the world. Signages located at public area such as train station or street play a significant role in natural disaster or accident by providing the evacuation alert or correct informations. Recent few years W3C worked on Web-based signage which has Web browser is embedded, allowing to display or play Web content. Disaster use case is proposed in W3C Web-based Signage Scenarios and Use Cases [SignageUseCase].

The second use case is an over-the-top emergency alerting system operated by a local authorities or a government. An emgergency alerting of an major natural disaster such as an earthquake or a tsunami could be distributed by existing emergency alerting system (e.g. PWS). However, distributing an emergency alerting of an minor natual disaster such as heavy rain alert using existing method is too complicated compared to the importance of the information or alert. Web Push emergency alerting notification can provide more specific alert or information requested by the mobile or desktop application not requiring 3GPP or WiFi network. For example:

• Raining alert based on the location
• Transit alert such as accident information or suspend.

3.3. Non-emergency, Important notification

Non-emergency but important notification is required to real-time applications. Real-time application such as VoIP or telecommunication application, need to deliver the notification faster than other notification.

4. Security Consideration

Discovery of Push Server and application is out of scope in this document. However, discovery of reliable Push Server and application is definitely important. Also, it is important for Web Push Emergency Alerting notification to have a mechanism to avoid the abuse of system.

5. IANA Consideration

TBD

6. References

6.1. Normative References

6.2. Informative References

Author's Address