COMMUNICATIONS AND
MASS NOTIFICATION
In 2013, mass notification systems were restrictive
and controlled in their operation; they needed
to perform basic functions. The pre-scripted mass
warning messaging had five basic requirements:
1. Who is sending the alert?
2. What is happening?
3. Who is affected?
4. What action should be taken?
5. Time and date stamp.
Today’s interactive mobile communication applications
tell the entire story of someone experiencing an event,
rather than the legacy system’s “snapshot in time.”
The ability to send important mass notifications
or alerts to any number of people at once, allowing
for immediate, individual responses with an audit trail,
is often a primary investment before other situation
awareness tools. An “I’m OK” response plus the time
of travel a mass notification alert takes to reach an
individual furthest from its origination is important.
Notification of a moving threat to employees in
proximity of the emergency is critical. At an Ivy League
working group meeting of school safety and security
practitioners, the following question was asked: “What
is the greatest challenge this year?” A common theme
in the answers was that several of the universities could
not guarantee that all students and faculty were receiving
mass notification within a reasonable time frame. Two
of the participants answered that notification could
take 20 to 40 minutes in extreme cases.
A credentialed BICSI member
recommending ICT infrastructure
changes to schools, universities
and other enterprise facilities is an
excellent opportunity for the
BICSI RCDD and integrator
and a necessity for the end user.
8 I ICT TODAY
Indeed, some of the delays could be attributed to over
utilized voice over internet protocol (VoIP) controls
or network congestion points. However, the path
to speed and safety lies with needs identification,
redesign and possibly an upgrade to a system focused
on interaction and location of the individual
in or moving toward the danger zone.
Simply put, one-way communication is unacceptable
for most public safety applications. A credentialed BICSI
member recommending ICT infrastructure changes
to schools, universities and other enterprise facilities
is an excellent opportunity for the BICSI RCDD
and integrator and a necessity for the end user.
IP VIDEO TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES—
PRIORITIES COME INTO FOCUS
In 2013, the primary components of electronic school
safety and security included communications, mass
notification, video surveillance, and manual lockdown
systems. Copper and optical fiber ICT infrastructures
mainly supported these systems with IT departments
virtually separating high payload applications, such
as the video surveillance systems (VSS).
YouTube’s mobile application was introduced in 2012
and viewing IP video streams on a smartphone or tablet
was becoming immensely popular with retail and public
safety professionals; however, it did not become the
primary means of school surveillance, which remained
at the command center.
VSS was also largely used as a forensic tool and less
for real-time situation awareness, partly due to network
bandwidth availability and the challenges of decoding
a real-time video stream on a mobile platform.
Although communications and mass notification
remain primary tools for public safety, first responders
and safety and security practitioners, VSS is moving
forward as a real-time situation awareness tool. However,
end users are cautious about committing video management
system (VMS) or physical security information
management system revenue on software licensing,
potentially leading to less video surveillance coverage.
Today, new software leverages the use of existing VSS
with AI-based weapon recognition software (Figure 1).
A small AI application that is installed in an IP camera