This blog post is about mobile advancements made in situational awareness software, which allow you to improve risk management and emergency response.
Much like email and voice mail have automated the messaging function, it’s now possible to automate situational awareness with advancements continuing to be made. Remember how Star Trek’s Captain Kirk used to walk around with his communicator? That used to be science fiction; now it’s just science.
The world’s communication infrastructure has moved from rudimentary to super charged – from radios, handsets and pagers to smartphones and tablets. There’s been a proliferation of screens for sharing information. But thanks to computer-telephony integration (CTI) and robust middleware, every sensor, alarm and communication end point can be unified to ensure that key individuals, select groups or entire populations are able to read, hear and see what’s happening and do the right things in response, based on predefined protocols or modes and actions (i.e., if this, then that).
Situational awareness software enables you to control your entire universe of alarms and communication devices.
Real-time awareness through centralized monitoring, alerting and reporting is the key to emergency communication so both on- and off-site responders know what’s happening, where it’s happening, and how to respond. Such alarm and communication interoperability takes an organization from reactionary and siloed to proactive and holistic in terms of emergency alerting and response management.
All screens can be used to deliver critical information during an emergency, and that pertains to the personal screens most of us carry or keep near at all times. Our smartphones are even smarter when backed by an enterprise situational awareness solution. Users can respond to unfolding situations more quickly, initiate alerts and associated response plans more effectively, and escalate/notify others as necessary – all from one user interface. When Wi-Fi coverage weakens, the device switches automatically to cellular for uninterrupted alerting both on and off the premises.
Ask yourself … what’s dangerous in and around your organization? And what can you do to respond to a crisis and reduce its impacts?
Situational awareness is first a mindset and then a technology framework for creating time – time for you and your staff to prevent and/or respond to any threat or deviation from normal operations.
With a universal alerting engine, triggering events can be harnessed to drive awareness transactions – aka alerts – with specific details about an unfolding situation and how to address it. Therefore, situational awareness is the key to successful emergency communications and response management for any organization.
