Mobile duress is key to life safety in high-risk environments, and as such, it’s been a primary focus for Status Solutions since the company was founded in 2001. In fact, The Tomorrow Center in Gilead, Ohio, was one of our first customers. We outfitted teachers there with mobile duress buttons because the school serves students with severe emotional disabilities in grades 3-12, so student behavior can be unpredictable. And we’re currently working with the elementary schools in Stamford, Conn., to give every teacher and staff member mobile duress pendants to enact an automatic lockdown if an intruder is detected.
Lindner Center of Hope, a mental health center, has equipped approximately 90 staff with mobile duress pendants to ensure both employee and patient safety. Thanks to SARA’s Positioning System (SPS), a vector-mapping capability that helps locate an alarm source more quickly, Linder response teams can be where they’re needed in less than a minute.
We’ve also implemented SARA for mobile duress in hundreds of senior living communities throughout North America. One resident somehow fell behind her washer – I kid you not – but was rescued quickly because she had a mobile duress pendant powered by SARA.
Now we’re seeing hotels and resorts, as well as manufacturing plants, adopt mobile duress because of the ability to summon help quickly wherever users may be located – within a single building or throughout a multi-building campus.
The four-star, 28-floor West 57th Street by Hilton Club in midtown Manhattan is using SARA for mobile duress to enhance the safety of lone workers. More than 40 hotel staff members are equipped with mobile duress pendants at the start of their shifts. If a pendant is activated within the hotel or in the immediate outdoor vicinity, the SARA alerting engine automatically sends alerts to the security team on duty as well as the director of engineering via two-way radio.
And Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Indiana, Inc. (TMMI) uses SARA for duress alerting in the Princeton plant’s welding and storage areas, giving crewmembers who operate forklifts and tuggers the ability to call for immediate assistance without exiting their trucks. If a driver presses a mobile duress button, an alert automatically goes via radio and/or smartphone to team leaders. In addition to the truck ID, the alerts processed by SARA also include the approximate location of the truck.
The applications for mobile duress – and situational awareness – are many, as evidenced by these examples. Implementing the technology platform can help any organization strengthen its overall safety and security program.
