Call for Volunteers for a Forest Guide Working Group
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NENA is seeking participants for a Working Group to focus on the NG9-1-1 functional element known as the Forest Guide. The forest guides (FG) are related to the LVF and ECRF functional elements. The FGs are necessary to have multiple instances of LVF/ECRF interact with each other.
This working group will provide the specific and detailed information that could be used by an entity to identify what is required to develop, deploy and support a forest guide. This information may be in the form of a Request for Information (RFI) that would allow entities to identify specific functions that must be done and evaluate the effort to provide that function. The output of this working group may be more specific by providing requirements that an entity must meet and detailing specific implementation options.
Background from NENA Issue Statement:
RFC 5822 and NENA’s 08-003 define a hierarchy of Emergency Call Routing/Location Validation Functions (ECR/LVF’s) service response mechanism as "trees" that can be represented by their geographic coverage area. Information is organized hierarchically, in a tree, with tree nodes representing larger geographic areas pointing to several child nodes, each representing a smaller area. A collection of ECR/LVF’s servicing separate ESInets is called a forest. A forest guide (FG) keeps track of the coverage regions of all the trees for one service and location profile. So for example there may be a national forest guide that knows about all of the state forest guides. The state forest guide knows about all of the ECR/LVF’s within the state. When a validation application or routing application wants to validate a location or route a call the application only needs to know about one forest guide and by interrogating that forest guide it can be directed through the hierarchy to obtain validation or routing information. A server that does not answer the query can refer to a Forest Guide to determine what server should provide the response.
NENA 08-003 states "The Forest Guide must be managed nationally (agency not yet identified) and may evolve to an entity more representative of all public safety agencies. State ECR/LVF operators are responsible to arrange for their mappings to be provisioned in the national forest guide. The national forest guide operator will maintain well known contact information so that other national forest guides can arrange to exchange their coverage regions and mappings."
As pointed out in the quote an agency to manage the national forest guide has not yet been identified.
Feel free to pass this information along to any colleagues who may not be part of this distribution. Interested parties should contact the Working Group chair, Jim Shepard (512.656.7713). Please note that this Working Group has a short timeframe to complete its scope. Active attendance and participation will be required if you choose to sign up.
   
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