You can’t control the weather, but you can control how you prepare and respond to weather emergencies or other triggering events that require detailed, efficient and ongoing communication to protect people, property, business and convenience. That’s why situational awareness – including mass notification – is critical to emergency preparedness and disaster recovery.
As a risk management strategy, situational awareness refers to information about potential threats (triggering events) within a single facility or across an entire enterprise. Mass notification is a component of situational awareness that ensures pertinent information about triggering events (awareness transactions) is delivered automatically in as many ways as possible to those who will most likely be affected as well as those responsible for responding. Mass notification also includes the ability to send alerts on demand if unplanned events or changes occur in addition to updates.
Wouldn’t quickly and automatically notifying your stakeholders via smartphones and landlines create awareness and help ensure safety? What about the ability to send alerts via pages, texts and emails as well as by screen pops and over PA systems? All of these notification options are available by integrating multiple alarm systems into a single, managed alerting solution to communicate potentially life-saving information to the populations in your care.
It’s also possible – and important – to set up alerts to differentiate between different types of emergencies. For example, one alarm should signal a fire, which means people need to exit immediately, while another alarm should indicate a tornado, which means people need to shelter in place. Both alarms can be set up not just to activate sirens and strobes but also send out appropriate instructions via emails, texts and phone calls. After the danger passes, everyone can be notified again with all-clear messages.
It’s critical to drive situational awareness for life safety, security and environmental monitoring to as many screens as possible via mass notification. It improves awareness, mobility and most important life safety.
