UGAAlert offers variety in emergency notification

By: Marlyncia Pierce

Edited By: Carrie Donovan

The way university students receive messages about campus safety is evolving in the technological sense. The idea of “word of mouth,” or informing a friend of a situation face-to-face, is now accompanied with notification systems that universities, including the University of Georgia, are using to inform their students and faculty of an emergency. With text messaging growing as one of the primary source of emergency notification (according to the Campus Safety Mass Notification Study) and social media networks actively posting information, including news and safety, I interviewed Steve Harris, director of the Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness at the University of Georgia to learn about the university’s UGA Alert system and what methods the school uses to alert students.

What emergency notifcation methods did the office use prior to the UGAAlert system to notify students of emergencies?

Prior to the UGAAlert system being in place, there was somewhat of a gap in providing emergency information to the mobile University community, particularly students. Outdoor tornado sirens, the ArchNews mass e-mail system and other building emergency notification systems were utilized. We researched many systems in 2006 and implemented UGAAlert prior to the Virginia Tech incident. The VT incident spurred many institutions nationwide to add mass emergency notification systems.

How many of the university’s faculty, staff and students are signed up for UGA Alert today?

We have over 48,000 faculty, staff and students currently in the UGAAlert system. The system is based on an “opt-out” feature whereby all faculty, staff and students are enrolled and have the ability to remove themselves from UGAAlert. Over the past four years, very few people have opted out.

What obstacles does the system run into when sending out important alerts? (i.e, some students complain of delayed messages)

One of the problems is that a lot of people want to get the message at the same time. With technology, sometimes, there is a delay. The time between when an emergency is verified, (when first responders arrive on scene and gather information) and when the first alert is sent out is different for every emergency. For example, during a tornado warning, the UGA Police Dispatchers immediately sends out the alert to announce a tornado warning. During other situations, every effort is made to send out an alert expeditiously, but time is needed to craft an appropriate message that provides accurate and timely response information based on the emergency situation.

Is the office involved with social networking sites, such as Facebook or Twitter?

We are not on Twitter, but are on Facebook with more than 100 fans. Right now, our office posts static information on training to the Facebook page, but the problem is updates. We don’t want to overcomplicate matters.

What are the future plans for the office and the emergency notification system?

To promote more and more integration so that the systems complement one another. We have established a campus-wide emergency notification committee that includes students to help guide our efforts in emergency notification. We are evaluating cost savings measures that do not impact service and reliability to our current systems. In addition, we are exploring the use of desktop alerting that would be used in conjunction with UGAAlert and other systems. Basically, desktop alerting would go out to all UGA computers on campus and scroll an emergency message whether you are in a lab or in a classroom. We are still exploring the use of social media.