IU-Notify plans to expand emergency notifications

The Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007 changed emergency notification systems on college campuses across America. It wasn’t until then that it became not only a necessity, but a law that all colleges and universities must implement these devices.

Before then, IU, along with most other universities, did not have a formal system in place. IU-Notify wasn’t created until Nov. 2007, but since the creation of the Emergency Management and Continuity Department in Feb. 2010, it has been at the forefront of new technology and emergency notification.
 
BEGINNING STAGES
While Mark Bruhn, associate vice president of Public Safety and Institutional Assurance, and others in the informational technology area started looking into ways to notify students of emergency situations on campus in 2002, it wasn’t until after the Virginia shooting that various committees at IU started to implement a plan.

Taking suggestions from the Virginia Governor’s Commission Report after the events at Virginia Tech, Bruhn said it was then that they started really looking at different campus-wide notification systems and quick methods to reach students.

IU Spokesperson Larry MacIntyre said a federal government regulation requires messages to be sent out to students within a 30-minute window.

The notification system chosen — now called Blackboard Connect — was a front runner because it had the most variety of notification methods: cell phone, home phone, office phone, text message, IU e-mail, pager and secondary sources.

Having so many different forms of notification comes at a price. At $220,000 a year, $2 per student on all IU campuses, the communication methods have been used 18 times on the Bloomington campus for emergency notifications since Aug. 2010, including danger on campus and warnings about inclement weather.

“Communication is what we really focus on. You could have the best technology in the whole world, but some piece is bound to fail — that is why we have so much redundancy,” said Diane Mack, director of Emergency Management and Continuity.

IU students’ standard contact information is automatically loaded into the IU-Notify system to receive alerts. However, not all fields are automatic, such as the text message field and secondary e-mail accounts, which must be plugged in by the individual on OneStart.

While the system may be new, Mack said this system is unlike any other in the country because it covers eight campuses spread 300 miles apart.

Bruhn said data from the text message notifications show that the Bloomington campus of 40,456 students for the spring semester currently sends text messages to only 18,430 students, a little less than half.

As of Aug. 2010, 157,115 phones have been called on the Bloomington campus for emergency notifications and test purposes.

For those afraid of entering their information in fear of spam or too many messages sent, Mack assured that it is only done when absolutely necessary.

“When we send those messages we’re not just sending them haphazardly, we have vetted it,” Mack said.
 
HOW IT WORKS
Because the Blackboard Connect system is not based at IU, every notification must go through the system and then back out.

The EMC team is trying to improve the delivery speed.

“If it’s a county-wide or even a region-wide incident like these weather events that we’ve had, the cell towers in the areas are going to be inundated,” Bruhn said.

In case of a last minute emergency, Valerie Peña, executive director and chief of staff for the office of public affairs and government relations, said there are specific canned messages that are all ready to go. Another factor that Bruhn and his team have been working toward is figuring out the best medium and sequence of releasing information.

“Generally speaking, text messages are really the fastest way for us to reach somebody,” Bruhn said. “People complain that they get their e-mails three hours after whatever the event was.”

He said analysis is still trying to figure out why there are delays in students receiving messages or at times don’t receive messages at all.

As additional means of communication through social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have become more prevalent, there is a reliance on people friending and following the IUEMC  for additional information.

“There is some sort of an onus back on the individuals to put as much information as they can into IU-Notify, but then to also have enough of an interest,” Peña said.
 
IMPROVEMENTS AND ADDITIONAL MEANS
With the new communication systems in place, and even more being done to try to improve speediness, there are still projects being developed to give more means of emergency notification.

“We’re trying to work our magic so that we only have to hit one button,” Mack said.
Among the new approaches to enhance IU-Notify is displaying emergency messages on digital signs across campus. IU-Purdue University Indianapolis has already implemented them, but this method is not scheduled for other IU campuses until summer 2011.

“The department will be able to display whatever content on those displays is pertinent to their operation,” Bruhn said.

The EMC will be able to post emergency messages on the displays.

Another website that is being developed is www.protect.iu.edu, whose target release date is mid-March. Bruhn said it is going to be a comprehensive source for security, safety, emergency management and response, as well as a central spot for information. It will also allow parents and people off-campus to subscribe to information alerts.

Two more security measures include sirens that will go off for tornado warnings and notification systems in individual classrooms that are listed at $800 apiece. The digital panels would be located on the walls of each classroom and would feature — if needed — an emergency message and chaser lights around the outside.
 
QUALIFICATIONS FOR AN EMERGENCY
What qualifies as an emergency big enough for IU-Notify is determined by a large group of people on a case-by-case basis. With IUPD and EMC located in the same building plans are carried out more quickly.

“We rely on the police department to tell us how dangerous the situation is at the moment and how dangerous it might become for the campus,” Bruhn said.

When an emergency or weather situation breaks on campus, members of the EMC team and IUPD gather in the campus emergency operations center complete with six televisions to keep up with the latest news.

“It is designed to bring people together,” said Jerry Minger, university director of public safety. “During an emergency event someone is in here all the time.”

If something occurs off campus, protocol is the same.

“We work very closely with both the city and county and recognize a lot of the things that happen off campus,” Peña said. “We have so much housing that is off campus, but they do fall into what is called a city scenario in that sense.”

During the recent class cancellations that took place due to the weather, decisions regarding when to cancel class and campus were made later than expected, which prompted a delay in the system and caused students and faculty to find out classes were canceled after they reached campus.

Furthering its mission of student safety, IUSA created an e-mail help line, iusaftey@indiana.edu, and used it this past snow day to learn of the dangers students were facing on campus, IU Student Association Vice President Peter SerVaas said.

“We called key people within the IU administration and they were very responsive and said they weren’t aware of how bad it was until we showed the stories,” he said.

While Bruhn said that he agrees that the committee should have met earlier and that the committee realized it should have made a decision more quickly but that the delay had to do with that decision.

“Canceling classes or closing the campus is serious business. We want people to continue their studies,” Bruhn said. “We are teaching students to operate in the business world, so we operate on the notion that if you can be safe on campus we won’t cancel.”