With that in mind, more than 20 technology vendors earlier this month successfully demonstrated a new set of standards that would allow dissimilar data communications systems to work together during an emergency. The demo took place at the annual conference of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) in Phoenix.

Matthew Walton, chairman of the nonprofit, Washington-based Emergency Interoperability Consortium , which helped organize the demonstration, said improving emergency communications between multiple agencies in a disaster remains an urgent nationwide priority. "There is an overarching need for both private companies and public entities to share data in the context of emergencies," Walton said.

The first standard aimed at that effort is the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), which is a text-based data interchange format that allows the collection and distribution of "all-hazard" safety notifications and emergency warnings across information networks and public alerting systems used by first responders. The CAP standard was approved and released about a year ago by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a nonprofit, international consortium working on the development and adoption of e-business standards.

"CAP is now used every day by the National Weather Service, which basically broadcasts every weather alert in a CAP message," Walton said. The protocol works with any CAP-compliant interface used by data communications systems from various vendors.

The U.S. Geological Survey is also using CAP standards to send out messages about earthquakes and other geological incidents. CAP messages provide instant information to recipients telling what has happened, where it happened, when it happened, how bad the incident is and who is providing the information, Walton said. "Prior to CAP, there really wasn't anything of significance to alert someone that something was happening."