Scenario 1:
A prank or an accident releases concentrated acid in a chemistry lab. You're in charge of campus safety, so you notify people on campus to avoid the chemistry building. Job done, right?
Maybe. But maybe not.
Worried parents call, frantically asking for the whereabouts of their child!
If you had sent the notification alert as a 2-way message, asking if the recipients were safe, you could just look at the report from the alert and find the child's status.
This, of course, is a very mild scenario.
Scenario 2:
There are reports of gunfire at a lecture hall. You have the ability to send a text message to the entire student body, but merely sending a message out does not help you address the attack. What if you could receive information from all the students, faculty & staff? What if instead of just texting "Shots fired in Hanes Hall. Keep clear," you could text "Shots fired in Hanes Hall. Reply if you have additional info. Give your location!"
If you needed logistical information from someone who was in trouble, you would be able to do that as well.
This is why Hyper-Reach (http://hyper-reach.com) has introduced the first 2-way SMS messaging solution for emergency notification. One-way communication was adequate in the last century, but why limit the most valuable sources of information you have - the eyes and ears on the ground?
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Agile Communications Group has offered fully functional 2-way alert communications for over three years and has multiple Colleges and Universities on the system.
ReplyDeleteThe system allows multiple simultaneous 2-way communications, it will post the incoming SMS to a url, can be displayed as a crawler across one to many PC, digital boards and/or diretly to the first responders cell phones. Allows full remote access to first responders who can send follow up messages directly from their cell phones on-site.