University of Pennsylvania Implements Emergency Notification System

"Emergency communications are a challenge at a university such as ours, which has widely dispersed campuses and decentralized departments with diverse requirements," said Maureen S. Rush, vice president for public safety, University of Pennsylvania."

As a result, the university implemented inEnterprise, a unified, multi-modal emergency communication system by MIR3, with support for all types of voice- and text-based communication devices that provides two-way notifications and instructions to students, staff and parents during critical events.

The University of Pennsylvania, which is comprised of three campuses, 16 schools, nearly 24,000 students, and more than 20,000 staff and faculty, cited several features that were key to the selection of the emergency notification platform:

• Unlimited communication devices per user to support all options used by today's technology-savvy students.
• Two-way messages for both voice and data to allow the university to track notifications and quickly determine who is safe and who needs help.
• A Message Bulletin Board feature that lets users call into a central number to obtain updates about the status of an event.
• A fully hosted, redundant system that is located at three separate centers throughout the United States.
• A unified approach for contacting parents using emergency contact data.
• Robust data protection and security features to ensure user privacy and compliance with federal regulations.
• A strong Application Program Interface (API) to automate the sharing of users' emergency notification information with the university's master database.
  

inEnterprise bridges the gap between all standard forms of communication to enable high-speed two-way communications to tens of thousands of users and devices across all modalities, including e-mail, wireless pager, PDA, landline, mobile phone, satellite phone, TDD/TTY, fax and two-way text messaging. It can also be used for routine high-volume messaging and all-purpose broadcasting such as administrative notices to university staff, messages for coordinating faculty and schedules, and delivering information and receiving responses from students and parents that can be monitored and reported on.