The risks facing institutions and the people in them today have grown complex. New approaches to emergency preparedness and emergency management are required to protect students, faculty, staff and others from increasingly frightening dangers that threaten campuses and other facilities.

The following includes some best practices in the preparedness, response and recovery phases of emergency planning, especially as they relate to software that offers effective, mobile, emergency communications.

A situation on campus can involve a broad spectrum of people. A best practice is to identify a broad working group that is involved in the planning process, appoint an emergency response manager, and then identify clear owners given the different types of situations.

During the chaos of an emergency event, communication processes that were once thought to be easy can become confusing and difficult. Even the use of an emergency notification tool that seemed so simple during training several months ago can become daunting and fraught with the risk of mis-communicating simple information and thus compounding a situation.

A few simple best practices can make a significant difference.

Define acceptable terms for emergency mass communications – What are the right terms for you to use that will be unambiguous and not cause confusion? Is there more than one library? Is the word “gunman” appropriate for a female assailant? How will people respond to a directive to “stay in your residence hall”? Do you expect them to return there if they are currently in a classroom or library? Are there abbreviations for text messages that might be particularly clear or unclear? Many institutions have created lexicons for emergency situations; leverage what others have created and modify them for your own use. Make sure you test any terms that are unique to your campus with some actual potential recipients of the message. Things that seem clear to a group of administrators might be interpreted completely different by a group of 19 year old students. Many institutions will choose to review emergency messaging language with appropriate legal and security staff as well.

Determine target audience(s) specifics — Each audience will have different appropriate priorities and content. Different communication content and modes are relevant to different audiences. The first job of the crisis communications team is to contact the list of need-toknows – security, key administrators, and first responders. The individuals on this list may depend on the specific situation. When will these key individuals be contacted and what will they be told?

Let’s look at the simple example of a chemical spill on campus. First responders would be notified first and told all appropriate details, including the expected material, resources in route, which roads are to be closed, what to communicate to civilians, and where to report. Students would be told to avoid the area in question, and to look to the web site for more information. Parents and media might be notified that there are no injuries and no immediate danger to any students or faculty and that more updates will follow.

The important planning step is to identify the different steps and procedures for communicating with each audience. Identify the appropriate mode of communication for each audience — Different modes of alerting may be better suited to specific audiences. For a mass audience where the highest performance and throughput is required, SMS alerts are an ideal solution. On the other hand, delivery notification to first responders may require a more interactive alert media that has better capability to convey a richer level of content and interactivity through a conference call.

The number of first responders, and the corresponding network capacity used in communicating with them, is also a much smaller number than an entire student body. In this case, a voice alert may be ideal. The ideal notification media for faculty, admin, and staff may fall somewhere in between.

Interested parties who are not directly part of the school community (e.g. parents, local community) may be effectively supported with a higher latency, lower touch alert such as email.

Institutions should consider their different potential audiences when developing their mass notification procedures and determine appropriate media accordingly.

Consider coverage and capacity limitations of your available communication modes — Each mode of communication has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Consider implementation of an inbound notification infrastructure — An effective mass notification system should enable inbound responses and provide a simple mechanism for reporting on and responding to those messages.

Additionally, institutions should plan for a large number of inbound information requests. Often, on premise telephony systems can be saturated with inquiries from press and parents. Coupled with even a small percentage of students calling in response to a notification they received, the call capacity of even the most robust telecomm infrastructure can be brought to its knees. In addition to a well-maintained informational web site, many institutions utilize off-campus tollfree information lines to steer call volume off site and effectively answer most of the typical questions.

Set expectations both with the communication team and the audience in advance of the event.

Create message templates – Most institutions report that upwards of 75-80 percent of situations they encountered were ones they foresaw as possible threats. Pre-created messaging templates can take much of the “fog of war” out of an incident. By creating and using simple templates with fill-in-the-blank dates, locations and key details messages can be quickly edited and sent. It is important that the content created be appropriate for each mode of communication.

Identify alternates and back up plans. The only thing that can be completely counted on in any plan is that things will not go as you expected. That is not to say a plan isn’t invaluable, but you must be prepared to handle the unanticipated. If your internet service is down, can you still send an emergency notification? Where do you direct people for more information if your web site is down? If your landlines and cellular communications are spotty, are there established face-to- face coordination procedures?

The most important step in preparing for the unexpected is ensuring lines of authority and communication are clear. When chaos strikes, many teams revert back to the habits of a team of 6-year old soccer players with every player running to the ball while leaving the goal unattended. Ensure that your team understands when they need to chase the ball and when they need to mind the goal.

Document and make plans easily accessible. Make sure emergency planning binders include instruction materials, and necessary passwords/login information, contact information are distributed to and accessible by those responsible for implementing emergency plans. Hard copy availability is important in case internet access is unavailable. We also recommend that this binder also contain a short, one-page school specific “cheat sheet” that describes the tactical process for sending an alert.

Communicate the plan to the campus and local community. From ensuring students know to give their contact information, to ensuring the patrol officer on duty knows to unlock the motor pool gate; communicating the emergency plan is critical to its success. While there are normally effective and well established procedures for communicating with first responders and administrators, getting the word to students and faculty normally requires a more comprehensive effort.

A plan is only as good as its execution. Ultimately the success or failure of any emergency response plan is based on how well the different constituents execute on their responsibilities. Periodically test systems, processes and people.

Response

Communicate truthfully and promptly, and communicate succinctly. The communication goal is to be transparent without causing panic and chaos in the community. This means getting the word out quickly, communicating effectively without undue complexity, and monitoring the situation itself as well as the coordinated strategies and tactical execution of your safety plans and protocols.

Be comfortable not over communicating. Too much information can confuse things during a crisis, and when the community requires clear messages that demonstrate leadership and promote safety, be succinct.

Expect to be forced to make decisions based on incomplete information. As with all other aspects of your emergency planning, plan your chain of command, and your tactical response. What are the decision- making processes involved in your tactical response? Do constituents across all functional areas understand the bounds of their authority and a clear chain of decision making – within your safety responder community, the administration, security and police, and the campus at large?

Organize your first responders. Some emergencies have a clear tactical protocol; others may be more ad hoc. Build appropriate networks of first responders and have lists that can reach these teams prebuilt and ready to access in an emergency deployment.

Plan to utilize response features in your alert solution. Be sure that the administrators of your alert solution are fully trained to manage responses from individuals during the alerting process. This includes checking responses, validating delivery of emergency messages in a timely fashion, dispatching help to individuals in crisis who request assistance, and communicating with strategic players in your emergency management team.

Recovery

Recovery should not be overlooked as part of the emergency alerting communication plan. This is the final phase of emergency management – returning the campus to its normal state.

Again, determine the decision makers. Who on the team has the authority to recall a lockdown? Who determines if the crisis is complete? Again this takes some planning according to your risk predictions. As you know, in some events, staff on the ground may lack complete visibility of a threat. Most schools recognize that distressed communication of a still-active threat is a high risk issue.

Your emergency preparedness scenarios must include a process to declare a threat fully mitigated, and assign responsibility to those who make that final determination.

Provide a smooth transition from Crisis to Normal mode. Many customers structure an “all clear” message that communicates the end of an event. Once your decision-makers have called a situation clear, send a concise alert to the community announcing this fact referencing any available information resources that are available to explain the situation that has occurred.

While it’s obviously impossible to predict all events that might occur in our midst, it is entirely possible to build a practice that protects and prepares us for many of the trials that await us. ❑

Raju Rishi is the chief strategy officer and co-founder of Rave Wireless, Inc., a provider of software that provides multimodule alerting messaging via cell phones, email and other communication tools. For more information, go to www.ravewireless.com.