Campus Safety - Emergency Notification Systems

When a parent sends their son or daughter off to college the major concerns that they have involve safety and security. Many colleges and universities put a major emphasis on the safety of their campus to use as a selling point when recruiting potential students. There are many systems and processes put in place to ensure that campus security is effective and adequate for potential situations that may arise.

Campuses have placed alerting systems at the top of their priority list to protect students and staff in case of an emergency or threat. The main concern for schools is the threat of terror and criminal acts, as well as fires, accidents and extreme weather such as earthquakes, tornadoes and tsunamis. Warning thousands of individuals quickly about the situation and delivering clear instructions for action help ensure a quick, effective and safe response.

There are many individuals at a school that can influence and decide which type of alerting system should be installed and for what level emergency it will be implemented. The potential people at a college that should be concerned with the safety and security of its students include:

• Campus emergency managers

• Security managers

• Crisis management teams

• Fire and safety personnel

• IT managers and,

• Campus executives

Making sure that all of the people mentioned below are a part of the decision making process when it comes to putting security precautions into place will enable the school to choose and implement the best alerting system possible.

One of the solutions available is the IWSAlert, which is a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solution that turns a schools’ existing IP network into a comprehensive emergency notification system. IWSAlerts integrates with other alerting channels such as PA communication, sirens, telephony and text-messaging services and provides a single, unified console for managing, triggering and controlling the emergency notification process across all delivery devices. This allows campuses to quickly and efficiently communicate a consistent yet individually tailored alert to students, personnel, first responders, senior management, security managers, parents and surrounding communities. The information is sent via multiple and redundant means, including desktops and laptops, cell phones, PDA’s, Blackberries, landline phones, PA systems and sirens.

Some of the major benefits of a campus alert and warning system are:

• Quick notification using existing IP network

• Sends alerts to emergency responders and neighboring facilities

• Many different channels can be used to notify people (PDA, computer, sirens etc.)

• Integrates with sources of emergency notification such as the National Weather Service

There are many additional benefits to this system, and reasons why every campus should have such a system. When the safety of students is concerned, it is best to be best suited for an emergency situation than to get caught without the proper security alerts and precautions in place.