When Seconds Count
Network-Centric Emergency Alerting Answers the Call
By Simon Berman

Hospitals and universities face unique challenges in protecting people and property in the event of an emergency. These facilities often have large and complex layouts that are, by design, open and accessible to their constituents. Every day, thousands of people come and go in these self-contained “mini cities” that include dormitories, patient rooms, laboratories, cafeterias, classrooms, libraries, parking decks and hazardous waste storage areas.

Safeguarding the populations of such large and dynamic institutions requires extensive preparation and applications of capable technology.

Across the United States, many of these facilities have emergency response plans that help prepare them for unforeseen man-made and natural disasters including campus shootings, extreme weather, chemical spills and other accidents.

Network-centric emergency alerting can greatly augment response plans to effectively deal with these situations. Although each type of emergency presents a different challenge, network-centric emergency alerting can successfully protect lives, property and facilities by executing a rapid, pervasive and targeted notification to those who may be impacted. Many schools, universities and hospitals have adopted network-centric emergency alerting because of those benefits and the advantage of leveraging and integrating with their existing communication channels.

What is Network-Centric Emergency Alerting?

Traditional alerting systems, such as sirens and public address systems, provide uni-directional warning to people within a very contained geographic area. They can be triggered quickly, but they are limited in the amount of information they can convey and they can only reach onsite populations.

Network-centric alerting moves beyond this type of alerting to transform organizations’ existing IP networks into a pervasive alarm system that can reach desktop computers, landline phones, cell phones, mobile devices as well as sirens and public address systems. By utilizing the IP network, alert dissemination is significantly quicker, and with a unified approach, a consistent message is relayed across all channels. And as an added benefit, different messages can be targeted to various groups depending on the recipient’s role or location in the organization.

Network-centric notification systems can reach tens of thousands of network-connected devices with specific messages and instructions for action in an average of one minute. In addition, a delivery acknowledgement and user response mechanism tracks who has received the alert and their responses ─ an important capability for personnel accountability.

Deploying an IP-based emergency notification system gives emergency managers the ability to activate and manage alerting across multiple communication channels – desktop computers, text messages, pagers, BlackBerry devices, email, public address systems – from a single easy-to-use Web interface. Any authorized emergency operator can create and send alerts from any network-computer PC.

And because university and hospital personnel tend to be large and change regularly, these emergency systems can integrate with user directories that contain contact information to ensure alerts are sent to the right addresses. Outdated phone numbers and abandoned email accounts mean that when needed most, alerts fail to reach the individuals. The leading vendors in the network-centric emergency notification market provide modules that retrieve and synchronize personnel contact information such as office, home and mobile telephone numbers and email addresses from multiple enterprise repositories to ensure accurate contact details are available for emergency notification.

Evaluating Emergency Alerting in Peer Organizations

To understand the many benefits and capabilities of different mass notification solutions, security managers can research examples of how network-based emergency alerting operates in real-world deployments.

The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED), which provides high-quality healthcare services to 700,000 active duty Navy and Marine Corps personnel and 2.6 million family members and retirees, is an excellent case study. BUMED is taking an enterprise-wide approach to emergency alerting and management by deploying a network-centric, Web-based emergency alerting system.

In an emergency, BUMED alerts its personnel via desktop computers, mobile devices and telephones, all within minutes. Emergency operators can log into the password-protected site, select a preconfigured emergency scenario, amend it or create a new one, and then send out the alert through multiple redundant channels, reaching personnel within minutes.

The ability to reach medical professionals is critical to achieve an effective response. If an emergency requires moving patients, it takes significant time and effort to move people to another facility that can meet the patients’ needs for treatment and safety. The more quickly staff are alerted, the faster they can begin making the necessary preparations.

The BUMED system also provides a feedback mechanism, allowing the command to track alert acknowledgements and responses from recipients. The system dramatically improves the process of keeping personnel contact lists up-to-date by integrating directly with Active Directory and other user repositories to ensure contact information is kept current.

Each facility within BUMED is able to alert its own local campus independently, while the command headquarters can reach all facilities simultaneously across the command depending on the situation.

UCLA’s True Test of Alerting

Like all colleges and universities, UCLA faces the difficult challenge of protecting thousands of college students, faculty and staff who live, work and play across its sprawling campus. The UCLA campus encompasses 174 buildings across 419 acres. In addition to the approximately 40,000 students at the university, there are more than 4,000 faculty members.

UCLA instituted a reliable network-based emergency alerting system capable of reaching its campus population wherever they are located. UCLA’s network-centric alert system was put to the test on July 29, 2008, when a 5.4 magnitude earthquake unexpectedly shook the Los Angeles area. Within minutes of the event, UCLA emergency managers successfully triggered their “BruinAlert” mass notification system to notify the campus population of the earthquake.

Using BruinAlert’s Web-based console, UCLA emergency management officials were able to alert thousands of people within minutes via multiple communication channels and devices. More than 48,000 individuals received a combination of desktop pop-up alerts, emails and text messages. Students were informed that an earthquake took place and were warned about the possibility of aftershocks following the main quake. They were also directed to tune into the campus AM radio station for additional instructions.

With a reach of more than 97 percent of the campus population, the system successfully notified individuals within minutes. The earthquake response demonstrated the value that network-centric emergency alerting can play in quickly targeting and reaching a large, distributed population via multiple communication channels – from a single unified console.

Air Force University Is Prepared for Emergencies

The U.S. Air Force Air University, located on Maxwell Air Force Base, which provides higher education options to Air Force enlisted and civilian personnel, serves as another example of the successful implementation of network-centric emergency alerting. When an emergency occurs on base – whether inclement weather or a potential attack – the Maxwell command post operators can quickly notify all base personnel, university staff and students with alerts sent to computer desktops and other network-enabled devices.

Being Ready When It Matters Most

As demonstrated in the preceding real-world case studies, emergency mass notification can be a complex undertaking that must work flawlessly when needed. Creating an emergency plan before a crisis occurs, and implementing a large-scale enterprise-class emergency notification system, gives organizations an important advantage in an emergency. Investing in a system that leverages the existing IP infrastructure and integrates with existing sirens or public address systems has proven to be the most effective way of alerting the most people in the shortest amount of time – and it’s that type of system that will help emergency managers be prepared for quick action when seconds count most.

About the Author

Simon Berman is responsible for all aspects of corporate and product marketing for AtHoc where he oversees the strategic planning and execution of new market penetration and product delivery.

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