--- title: "Government, explained | Nexus Observatory" description: "Interactive explainer: government and national programmes in 3D, chapter by chapter: density is a regulation, not a wish…" url: https://observatory.global/industries/government/explainer/ publisher: Nexus Observatory Inc. updated: 2026-11-02 --- Intro 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 Government and public safety. Camera mast · 30 m; Bow Valley, Alberta ASTER GDEM v3 Sector explainer · Government and public safety # Warning starts with a measurement. Emergency management, wildfire, flood and early-warning delivery. The demand signal is data gaps and sustained operation, not hardware. Five deployments, one record: from the station that measures to the authority that decides. **Scenarios**: 5 **Templates**: 9 **Open projects**: 5 **Territories**: 4 **01** GBON network **02** Wildfire cameras **03** Street flood **04** CAP alerting **05** Deployable cell **06** What buyers ask **01** · Surface network WMO GBON ## Density is a regulation, not a wish. WMO-grade stations reporting through WIS 2.0, funded through the systematic-observations financing pathway. The Global Basic Observing Network sets the floor: surface stations every 200 km or closer, upper-air soundings every 500 km or closer, reporting hourly and twice daily through WIS 2.0. On a square grid the floor is n = ⌈A ÷ s²⌉; coastlines and terrain only add to it. Territory GBON requires 200 km or finer. **Surface stations, square grid**: — **Upper-air stations at 500 km**: — **Hourly surface reports per day**: — **02** · Wildfire detection Line of sight ## A camera sees only what the ridges allow. Camera towers with edge inference and co-located fire-weather stations, utility- or agency-funded. Siting is a line-of-sight problem on real terrain: every ridge between the lens and a smoke column hides it. Move the mast and raise it; the red cells are the ground the camera can see within its detection range, traced ray by ray across the Bow Valley elevation model with earth curvature and refraction. Smoke-plume detection range depends on optics and haze; 10 to 20 km is a common planning figure. Move the mast **Ground visible in range**: — **Share of ground in range**: — **Farthest visible cell**: — **Mast ground elevation**: — Co-located fire-weather stations feed the same record, so every detection carries the wind and humidity at the moment it was seen. **03** · Street flooding Alert threshold ## An alert is a threshold, chosen before the storm. Open-hardware depth sensors with open data and alerts to emergency management. The depth sensor reports every minute; the threshold decides how early the alert reaches emergency management, and how many false alarms the city accepts in exchange. **Alert raised at**: — **Road reaches 15 cm at**: — **Lead time**: — **Minutes above threshold**: — Lead time is the minutes between the earliest reading at the threshold and the road reaching 15 cm. Warnings and official acts stay with the competent authority; the sensor gives it time. **04** · Alerting CAP 1.2 ## Sensors trigger. The authority decides. Software-heavy: sensor triggers feed an alert origination tool; the alert authority keeps every decision. The Common Alerting Protocol (CAP 1.2, OASIS; ITU-T X.1303) carries the alert from the origination tool to sirens, apps and cell broadcast. Set the three fields an authority weighs, then hold or release. Warnings, dispatch and other official acts stay with the competent public authority: the grid informs the decision and never makes it. Urgency Severity Certainty 1. **1** Depth sensor crosses the threshold; the edge signs the reading with its evidence. 2. **2** The origination tool drafts a CAP message for the duty officer. 3. **3** The authority reviews, edits and decides. 4. **4** Released alerts go to cell broadcast, sirens and apps. Authority decision CAP 1.2 carries identifier, sender, sent, status, msgType and scope in the alert block, and category, event, urgency, severity and certainty in each info block. **05** · Incident command Radio horizon ## Coverage starts at the height of the mast. A cell on wheels with satellite backhaul, mesh telemetry and environment nodes at the incident base. Over flat ground the reach of a deployable cell is set first by the radio horizon: raise the mast and the circle grows, d = 4.12 (√h₁ + √h₂) km for heights in metres on a 4/3 earth; terrain and clutter then cut into it. **Radio horizon**: — **Area inside it**: — **06** · Proof Evidence ## What a meteorological service asks to see. Procurement in this sector buys evidence, not hardware. Each item below is produced by the grid as a record while it runs. - **01** Reporting uptime - **02** Data-format conformance - **03** Independently evaluated false-alarm rates - **04** Time to repair - **05** References from a meteorological service or an emergency agency - **06** Bilingual alerting where required multi-hazard early warning system GBON WIS 2.0 automatic weather station tender wildfire detection camera flood sensor network CAP alerting deployable cell impact-based forecasting EW4All Open work in the field: FloodNet NYC open hardware, UCAR 3D-PAWS, Open CAP editors, WIS2 reference nodes (wis2box), Sensor.Community. [Plan with us](https://observatory.global/contact/) [Sector overview](https://observatory.global/sectors/public-safety/) **07** · More sectors ## Every sector, one grid. [Sector explainer **Cities** Air, heat, flood and noise, block by block.](https://observatory.global/industries/cities/explainer/) [Sector explainer **Communities and rural** Locally owned connectivity and sensing.](https://observatory.global/industries/communities/explainer/) [Sector explainer **Industrial** Sites, ground and air on one record.](https://observatory.global/industries/infrastructure/explainer/) [Sector explainer **Sector overview** Scenarios, proof and the lines that serve it.](https://observatory.global/sectors/public-safety/) [Nexus Observatory](https://observatory.global/)**Government and national programmes** . National observing infrastructure, delivered as one programme.[Talk to us](https://observatory.global/industries/government/contact/) Government - [Use cases](https://observatory.global/industries/government/use-cases/) - [Solutions](https://observatory.global/industries/government/solutions/) - [Systems and technologies](https://observatory.global/industries/government/systems/) - [Frontier](https://observatory.global/industries/government/frontier/) - [Open](https://observatory.global/industries/government/open/) - [Community](https://observatory.global/industries/government/community/) - [Countries](https://observatory.global/industries/government/countries/) Platforms - [Protocol & Grid](https://observatory.global/grid-services/) - [Field services](https://observatory.global/field-services/) - [Sensors & instruments](https://observatory.global/sensors/) - [Connectivity](https://observatory.global/connectivity/) - [Design and integration](https://observatory.global/#lines) - [Software](https://observatory.global/software/) - [Data & licensing](https://observatory.global/data-products/) Public and civic - [Public safety](https://observatory.global/industries/public-safety/) - [Cities](https://observatory.global/industries/cities/) - [Civil resilience](https://observatory.global/industries/resilience/) - [Communities](https://observatory.global/industries/communities/) - [Humanitarian](https://observatory.global/industries/humanitarian/) Open - [Protocol](https://observatory.global/protocol/) - [Technologies](https://observatory.global/technologies/) - [Industries](https://observatory.global/industries/) - [Countries](https://observatory.global/countries/) © 2026 Nexus Observatory Inc. 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