In today’s highly connected world, effective communication is indispensable to fostering a safe and connected community. With recent advances made to mobile technology and its creation of a more connected public, local businesses, governments, and their respective public safety departments have grown better equipped to share critical updates during all types of security and community events. During these situations, the ability to identify and reach residents and responders with reliable and automated communications can be the difference between finding missing children, resolving traffic congestion issues, triaging IT issues and even saving lives.
This is especially true for large-scale events that cross municipal jurisdiction lines and impact multiple area communities, hospitals, universities, transportation agencies, and businesses. These events require a regional, multi-agency response approach that ensures communication between previously unconnected groups so that all residents and visitors receive critical information quickly and efficiently. This concept – known as the “network effect” – can be achieved by deploying a unified critical event management solution that allows key emergency and public safety agencies (e.g., law enforcement, fire/EMS, city and regional government, healthcare and transportation) across different counties and regions to access the latest notifications and updates from local, verified resources and coordinate activities to ensure that no conflicting messages are delivered to relevant recipients.
Benefits of Regional Programs
Because multiple levels of government are often involved in responding to major incidents, there is huge value in regions banding together to develop a shared approach to critical communications and incident management. The major benefits of a common platform include:
- Quick and efficient communications. During major critical events that affect a large number of people across jurisdictions, assessing threats, automating incident processes and communicating directly with area residents and businesses is essential to keeping them safe. When agencies adopt a regional solution, local officials are able to quickly reach impacted residents and businesses with important information in situations where they may be in danger.
In April 2017, North Carolina’s Wake County, the second most populous county in the state, implemented a mass notification system that served over 30 nearby counties and cities, including Mecklenburg County and the City of Charlotte. Implementing a common critical event management and communications across the count ensures more streamlined training, support, and administration of the solution, and improves the ability of County public officials to issue emergency alerts quickly and efficiently.
According to Bill Greeves, Chief Information & Innovation Officer of Wake County, NC, “With an increasingly mobile population, traditional methods of emergency communication can no longer be relied upon in emergency situations. A mass notification system gives local officials the ability to interact with area residents and businesses in situations where they may be in danger.” Choosing a system that was already used extensively throughout the state enabled Wake County to be confident in its decision that it was deploying a platform capable of effectively reaching every hospital, emergency response agency, business and resident with important critical safety information.
Another example of an effective regional approach to critical event management and communications can be found in Florida. In April 2016, the state began implementing a statewide system that gave all counties and major cities the ability to share emergency information with residents and visitors. The state-administered system can communicate with county/city system administrators and can even send statewide AlertFlorida alerts if needed. Also, the National Capital Region, which comprises Washington, D.C., and several cities and counties within Maryland and Virginia, also uses one platform for emergency notification. The system is used to send internal employee alerts, public alerts, and cross-jurisdictional notices.
- Enhanced coordination between jurisdictions. It is common for agencies to have interoperability and compatibility communications challenges when responding with other jurisdictions. Leveraging a shared tool allows for better communication across county lines with residents and first responders, and enhances situation awareness for all agencies to improve coordinated response during events – whether that be severe weather, active shooter, fire, explosion, natural disaster or terrorist attack.
One example of this is the city of Tuscaloosa; Alabama’s recently launched local alert system. Named TuscALERT, the system was built on a cross-jurisdiction emergency notification platform that already had a strong presence in the area, as the system already provided critical weather and emergency information to residents in nearby Northport, Tuscaloosa County, and the Tuscaloosa County Emergency Management Agency.
It was a clear choice to help bring the city’s emergency notification efforts under one umbrella, according to Rob Robertson, Director of Tuscaloosa County Emergency Management Agency. With residents and employees regularly traveling across city and county lines, Robertson says, “A shared system provides us with better connectivity with other counties and organizations, including a larger neighboring county, Jefferson County, AL.” While the two EMAs were already working together for closer collaboration and communication between the two counties, the regional system made their communication and notification work more efficiently and in more of an automated fashion than ever before.
- Increased resident awareness and event management. The ability to effectively share information with attendees, stakeholders, area businesses and local residents is critical, especially during large-profile events, as incidents from traffic to riots can arise at a moment’s notice. A shared communications system provides an effective and reliable method for all regional city officials to alert attendees of event-related activities and emergency information.
While preparing for Pope Francis’ historic 2015 visit to the United States, the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management (OEM) faced a unique challenge from a communications standpoint. With over 1.5 million visitors expected to flood the city, the 70+ local, state and federal agencies involved in the event needed to effectively engage with not only residents but anonymous travelers from out of town who could easily opt-in to also receive information about closed roads, event locations, and other critical information.
The Philadelphia OEM deployed a critical event management and communication solution that all regional agencies used to identify and attract both resident and visitor opt-ins in a very short amount of time. In seven days, the City of Philadelphia amassed over eleven thousand opt-ins. By comparison, according to the Philadelphia OEM, it took almost eight years for them to amass 15,000 Twitter followers.
Similarly, to prepare for the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Washington, D.C. government officials worked with various agencies, including the U.S. Park Police, Secret Service, National Guard and the city’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) – in addition to neighboring police, fire and emergency management agencies and volunteers. A key factor in ensuring public safety during the weekend activities was the unified critical event management and communications platform that all agencies used to facilitate secure, fast and effective sharing of information.
Leveraging one system among all agencies helped ensure officials could be aware of, communicate, respond to and manage various types of incidents throughout the weekend. For example, on the day of the inauguration, a few groups of protesters became violent, but with a shared communication platform, law enforcement agencies were able to quickly respond to and manage the incidents.
- Streamlined training and support. Regions that band together to procure a critical communications system have the benefit of dedicated vendor support that offers ongoing technical assistance. A common platform also allows users across each agency to form a user community to help each other better understand and maximize use of the system. Especially during large-scale events, running live training drills with all agencies ahead of time verifies who receives the messages and response, and allows them to test the effectiveness of each template.
For example, before the inauguration, HSEMA hosted a full-day dress rehearsal in D.C.’s emergency operations center to help them prepare for any event that would put residents and visitors at risk. This included a joint training of the emergency alert system by the vendor. The training ensured staff members were proficient in using the communication system, and also assured message content, contact lists and policies relating to public and internal communication were followed by all the participating agencies.
During large-scale events, towns, counties, and numerous departments can be affected. Often, communication between these groups is limited to begin with. Add in event and IT disruptions and slow communication and response times can put citizens at further risk. A shared event management and communication system allow communities to share information around regional and industry-specific events that improve their preparedness, coordination, and communications to all impacted individuals and groups.
About the Author: Imad Mouline is the Chief Technology Officer and GM, Critical Event Management at Everbridge
