NOAA Weather Alerts Integrated with Hyper-Reach ENS

AsherGroup announced today that its Hyper-Reach® emergency notification service is integrated with NOAA weather alerts for approaching storms and storm paths.

Rochester, NY (PRWEB) October 22, 2009 -- AsherGroup announced today that its Hyper-Reach® emergency notification service is integrated with NOAA weather alerts for approaching storms and storm paths. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, tracks storms such as hurricanes and tornados and predicts their paths.

AsherGroup felt that releasing this product now, before the Spring hurricane and tornado seasons begin, would allow municipalities ample time to set up their systems and introduce them to their communities. Hyper-Reach® can be found at http://www.hyper-reach.com

This is not the kind of product you want to introduce in the middle of the Hurricane season when people need to focus on immediate safety issues. In the coming severe weather seasons, counties can be well prepared to notify their citizens in advance of storms

Hyper-Reach system automatically receives information from NOAA of a storm plume along with its predicted path and areas that will likely be affected. Hyper-Reach can be set to automatically call all the phone numbers in that predicted area with a warning. Alternatively, Hyper-Reach can automatically call a designated emergency coordinator first, for authorization to place the warning calls.

"This is not the kind of product you want to introduce in the middle of the Hurricane season when people need to focus on immediate safety issues. In the coming severe weather seasons, counties can be well prepared to notify their citizens in advance of storms," said Sam Asher, president of AsherGroup.

Asher explains how the system works, "Hyper-Reach system automatically receives information from NOAA of a storm plume along with its predicted path and areas that will likely be affected. Hyper-Reach can be set to automatically call all the phone numbers in that predicted area with a warning. Alternatively, Hyper-Reach can automatically call a designated emergency coordinator first, for authorization to place the warning calls."

For a demonstration video, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ9V1u2-prM

AsherGroup launched Hyper-Reach® in 2000 as a hosted Emergency Notification Service, with the first comprehensive web based mass notification system, the first Google™ Maps based map targeting, the first automated confidential and anonymous reporting hotline, and now, the first fully integrated targeted storm warning system. Hyper-Reach has served municipalities, universities, hospitals, faith based organizations, schools, and sports teams.

Notifying a Geographic Area during a Hostage Crisis

Apropos to my previous blog, I just created a YouTube video to demonstrate how easily an emergency notification campaign can be launched during a hostage crisis.

Please feel free to comment with your suggestions or your own experiences.

Emergency Notification during a Hostage Crisis

My first topic for this post was to cover ENS needs for governmental agencies. I found it daunting. Government agencies come in so many sizes and colors: neighborhood associations, towns, villages, parishes, cities, counties, states, and federal; law enforcement, fire, health & safety, prisons, military, bureaucracies; and on and on. Schools are yet an entirely different topic.

Because this field is so vast, I'm going to focus on specific situations that require the use of an ENS.

To do this, we first need to understand some of the regular issues that arise which would be mitigated or alleviated by a notification system and believe it or not, one of the more common disturbances police need to deal with is a hostage crisis.

During a hostage crisis, especially where the hostage holder has a firearm, police want people living or visiting in the vicinity to get the heck out of the way! This is known in the biz as a shelter in place messaging.

One of my experiences was during a night time hostage taking. Neighbors were exceptionally curious to see what was happening. Many turned on their porch lights and driveway lights. The police were very nervous about this, since all that light made them easy targets for the shooter!

These two needs: shelter in place and turn off your lights became the basis for the first message police sent to residents.

The next important item about the message is the target - that is, to whom should the message be delivered? For this situation, a map based targeting mechanism is probably the easiest way to designate the target.

In map based targeting, the person sending out the message does so via a computer program which displays a map of the area around the center point, the center point being the location of the hostage. How much or how little of the area needs to be notified is situationally dependent. Typically, the map based targeting mechanism allows the notification dispatcher to designate the area visually, either by drawing a polygon or setting some boundaries.

Once the area is set, one further item needs to be examined: Should the mass notification message intended for residents in the vicinity of a hostage crisis be sent also to the house where the hostage is being held? This can go either way, again depending on the situation, but it must be addressed, nonetheless. A good ENS will allow the dispatcher to create an exclusion list locations that are not to be notified.

When the message has been created and the target is defined, the only thing left is to send it. This sending process may or may not require additional authorization, e.g. a go-ahead from a situation commander. That is a procedural matter that a good ENS should allow for, though few do.

Two further items about the target: there will likely be both stationary phones as well as mobile devices in the target area. Targeting mobile devices will be another topic for this blog.

After a message has been sent to everyone in the target area, you need to understand that a bunch of the people receiving a call or text message about a threatening neighbor with a gun are going to be really scared! It is absolutely critical that once you have notified these people of the situation, you keep them informed with updates and most importantly, an all-clear message when the situation is under control.

From the ENS features perspective, it is extremely important that you are able to re-notify the same target that you selected initially. If you end up needing to recreate the target, it is highly likely that you will miss somebody, causing them unnecessary anxiety and yourself unwanted rebuke.

The problem is different if the hostage is in a high-rise apartment building, but we will defer that for now.

My goal was to explain how an ENS would be using during a hostage crisis, and by doing so, provide you with an understanding of how specific features of an ENS support that goal. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment.

Next Topics for this Blog

With input from some people in the industry, I'm putting together an index of topics that I or other respected people will cover in the next few posts. Yes, I know you may be questioning the claim that I am a respected or even respectable, but please bear with me on that count!!!

Topics:
Emergency Notification for different industries
In here, we will explore the features that any ENS needs, and the features that are specific to particular kinds of customers. For example, a SWAT or HazMat team some particular features that would be irrelevant to a K-12 school district. The kinds of customers we will explore are: Municipal emergency communications, Higher Education, K-12, Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery.

CAP - The Common Alerting Protocol: What is it? Should you care?
The Common Alerting Protocol is a communication protocol that was developed over the last 6 years which is designed to enable many, many different forms of alerting systems to inter-operate. For example, a television station could have a CAP listener that displays an alert message along the bottom of the screen. A telephone notification system could also be triggered by the same CAP message. Thus, the theory is that a single CAP enabled system can cause alerts to be sent to phones, sirens, TV, radio, etc. Life differs in practice.

RFP - Request for Proposal - what you should ask, what you should beware of
Most large organizations (public or private) that purchase an ENS go through an RFP process, in which someone or some group is tasked with the job of creating an RFP, several vendors are solicited to respond, and a selection is eventually made. The problems that arise from this process are too numerous to list. We will discuss, based on your industry, what you should be looking for, what you should avoid, and what can cause you great loss.

The Myths of Capacity
Many EN systems boast about their capacity for to make huge numbers of outbound calls. But this can be self-defeating. We will discuss the issues around capacity, how to measure it, and how to determine what you are really getting for your ENS dollar.

In the meantime, if you have any topics you would like discussed, please comment on this Post and I will respond as soon as possible.

Samuel Asher
President, Asher Group
http://ashergroup.com
http://hyper-reach.com
http://campus-reach.com