“You must purposefully and intentionally use many mediums in your emergency notification system,” says a man who knows. Mark Owczarski is director of news and information at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA where, on April 16, 2007, a gunman tragically took the lives of 32 students and faculty.

Indeed, getting word to everyone during an

Johnson County Community College staff communicate a tornado warning drill procedure through their emergency notification system. Photo courtesy of Keywest Technology.

emergency, whether a tornado, a fire, or something entirely unforeseen, is an age-old challenge, and one that was often poorly met. The technology simply didn’t exist for delivering urgent messages to a large number of people in diverse geographic locations. But recent developments have changed that, and IT and audiovisual technologies are becoming crucial parts of the solution.

Traditionally, emergency alert systems (sirens, public address systems, and automated phone messaging), and audiovisual technologies such as digital signage and videoconferencing were considered separate endeavors. Then, digital signage companies such as Visix, Keywest Technology, and MagicBox as well as other AV systems providers such as Discover Video and Polycom realized the power of their systems for emergency purposes. These companies expanded their services, or teamed with companies offering compatible emergency messaging, or they did both. Control systems manufacturers and video content delivery companies are making emergency notification part of their product positioning. The reason: many organizations that use AV technologies for communications also need to implement emergency notification.

THE MANY MARKETS
Large corporations can have thousands of employees spread across one campus or more, with varied environments from a quiet private office to a noisy manufacturing floor. Frito-Lay’s 28-acre manufacturing complex north of Indianapolis, IN is a good example. The company is using Visix’s AxisTV to communicate during emergencies.

Frito-Lay project manager Rick Crick explains, “The plant operates around the clock. If there’s a snow emergency and people are working, we have to mobilize them to leave quickly. If we had to, we could put

In the event of an emergency, the time and date display on this LED sign would be replaced by priority messaging. Photo courtesy of Inova Solutions.

something up fast that says, ‘We’re shutting the facility down. Perform these steps.’ These are the things you can get out to the displays very quickly.”

Transportation facilities, such as bus and train stations, terminals, and airports, and healthcare providers, too, need methods for critical message delivery. These areas serve large numbers of people, and in healthcare facilities, many are reliant on life-saving equipment.

The Oklahoma Army National Guard uses dozens of Polycom videoconferencing systems to reduce travel and provide support for the family members of those who are deployed. They also use them for first responder support. In the event of a bombing or natural disaster, the Oklahoma Guard is able to establish real-time visual communication between the first responder team and the command center in Oklahoma City. Video was also leveraged in this way in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, enabling daily communication for those deployed to Louisiana and the Oklahoma Guard headquarters.

Over the last decade or so, emergency messaging systems have been closely associated with their use in schools. Both K-12 and higher education campuses must react to not only weather and fire emergencies, but also police-ordered lockdowns and unexpected tragedies.

“Emergency notification on campuses is not a new thing post April 16, 2007,” says Virginia Tech’s Owczarski, “but the world changes, technology changes, and expectations change.” He points out that campus emergency systems have evolved from public address systems to campus-wide voicemail, university hotlines, sirens for tornado warnings, and email blasts.

“And now we’re a mobile society, and we are seeing the emergence of text messages,” he adds. “Emergency notification is a never-ending evolving process as technology changes. Our job is to keep current.”

Virginia Tech has always been an early adopter of emergency messaging technologies, even before the 2007 shootings. With a community of 36,000 and 100 major buildings (not counting sheds and garages) spread out over 250 acres, they realized in 2006 that newer technologies would improve their emergency communications. Virginia Tech had RFPs out for new emergency notification systems, to include campus-wide and external emails, notifications on the university home page, voicemail to campus phones and nonuniversity phones, outdoor siren, and text messaging to university and non-university accounts. They were interviewing vendors the week before the shootings.

“Faculty asks students to turn off pagers and cell phones during class, and sometimes even laptops,” he says. “That is where our tragedy occurred.”

Vast improvements were made in July 2007, when Virginia Tech implemented a far-reaching, multimedia multi-method emergency notification system that reaches community members no matter where they are on campus.

They call their system “VT Alerts,” which includes messaging sent via text, phone, and email, provided by Everbridge, with software developed by the VT staff. For a while after 2007, some faculty made exceptions to the no cell phones rule and, despite the disruption, allowed students to keep them on to ensure they received urgent VT messaging. But once inclassroom signage was implemented, faculty could again request that cell phones were turned off. The signage system from Inova Solutions consists of LED digital “ticker” signs mounted in classrooms, 191 signs in all. “Those in classes will get notifications instantaneously,” he says, “as opposed to text messaging, which could take 30 minutes because of the size of the population.”

Multi-faceted systems are widely acknowledged to be a necessary paradigm for emergency notification. Sure, email gets to everyone eventually, except those grabbing a quick bite in the lunchroom or those at offsite meetings. Sirens are immediate, but they cause panic without relating why there is an emergency, and provide no information as to actions people should take. Public address systems can get messages out thoroughly and quickly, but not to the woman parking her car or the hard-of-hearing manager of a noisy manufacturing floor, and digital signs are only as good as the number of people near enough to view them, and of no help to the visually impaired.

LEVERAGING AV TECHNOLOGIES
A major trend in audiovisual use for emergency situations is leveraging existing AV equipment. Michigan Technical University, for example, is using Crestron’s RoomView software and e-Control technology for emergency messaging, although RoomView’s original purpose was device control and tech support. Discover Video of Wallingford, CT added Emergency Video Alert to the company’s video streaming product line. This delivers live or recorded video to desktops simultaneously as an automatic pop-up, so no action is required by

The digital signage system at Johnson County Community College quickly converts to an emergency notification system.

the recipient. During an emergency, an official might sit down in front of a camera and microphone, press a button, and provide instructions to the entire organization or to specific zones.

“The very nature of an emergency is that it is unpredictable,” says Discover Video president Rich Mavrogeanes, “so live video is very important to provide real-time information, such as what exit is on fire or what part of a building or campus is dangerous. In other cases, the video might be a local live television feed, or perhaps a recorded message about a weather emergency.”

Corvallis, OR-based MagicBox’s Aavelin product is a turnkey player and content creation system. “We have a software option called Emergency Blast,” says Tom Searcy, president. “A page or crawl text is authored and then sent via network connection to the player. That content can be set to take priority over whatever is currently running.” This, as many of the other systems, can be accessed remotely, too, so someone offsite can create and schedule the messaging.

Digital signage company Keywest Technology of Lenexa, KS adapted their products as well, by offering a free software program, InstaCrawl, which runs on the company’s MediaZone digital signage and narrowcast software. And Visix has long offered multiple ways of delivering messages to organizations. Besides their digital signage system, AxisTV, they provide Desktop Messenger, Screen Saver, RSS Publisher, and Text Messenger.

INTEGRATION: OPPORTUNITIES ABOUND
Visix also recently announced the availability of a remote control application programming interface (API) and associated software development kit (SDK). “The most obvious use of this API is for alert notifications,” says Sean Matthews, president of Visix. “When an incident requiring mass notification evolves, there must be a multilevel response — sirens, lights, emails, text messages, desktop notifications, and digital signage messages. The AxisTV solution is one component of a multi-tiered system designed to effectively deliver important instructions, guidance, and calls to action.” Among the first organizations to use the Visix API include Omnilert (e2campus), Coastal Carolina University, University of Virginia, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Providing interfaces such as API’s is allowing AV manufacturers and system integrators to get in on this growing market. “The trend I am seeing is the emergence of companies focused on providing emergency messaging through a variety of mediums,” says MagicBox’s Searcy. “For example, a company like CentrAlert will send out emergency messages to a digital signage system, cell phones, land lines, sirens, etc. We provide an API, which we then jointly develop and test. When an emergency occurs, CentrAlert’s system kicks in and automatically contacts all of their channels of information distribution to get the message out. Their focus is on tying all of this together into one system. This is great for us as we have a solid API to work with, and we would rather partner with a company that handles the big picture.”

“The more AV technology advances, the simpler it gets for us,” says Dwight Brayton, executive vice president at Lexington, KY-based CentrAlert, “because it makes it easier for us to interface.” CentrAlert does the interface and control of third-party devices so that, as he explains, “when the sirens go off, the text messaging goes off and the AV messaging is triggered too.”

Another emergency notification system company, Houston, TX-based HyperAlert, is moving in the same direction. “The goal is to allow system operators to enter critical information in one single interface and distribute that information along all available communication channels,” says Jeremy Dilbeck, the company’s president. “Essentially, this integration consists of configuring our system to generate the correct output for our digital signage partners’ hardware, or, in some cases, web-based software, API. We are in the beginning stage of this, but see these integrations as a growth opportunity for both digital signage and notification companies. There is a substantial value-add from the customers’ point-of-view in ROI for their digital signage investment.”

Integration isn’t always limited to internal systems, either. “It takes a bit more thinking to realize that in-house video and/or digital signage systems can also be tied into local (even national) emergency management, that not only can provide audible warnings and instructions, but visual information that could fulfill compliance issues for the handicapped as well,” says Keywest’s David Little, who handles business development. Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS did just that. The college linked its Keywest signage system with the National Weather Service, and any emergency alert system sent by the National Weather Service can be shown on the digital signage network on campus.

These AV and emergency notification companies are at the forefront of what promises to be a growing market that consists of powerful and effective solutions to an old and very important problem.

“In an emergency, you need to use every communications vehicle at your disposal,” says Discover Video’s Mavrogeanes, “and AV is the best way to provide this.”

Denise Harrison, a writer and marketing communications consultant, has managed publications in a variety of industries, including commercial and consumer audiovisual.

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