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Platform Creates Situational Awareness for Schools, Others

911inform provides immediate situational awareness for schools, state buildings and health-care facilities, allowing personnel to lock down a building, access a camera or notify authorized personnel with a press of a button.

elementary school classroom with students raising their hands from their seats and a teacher at the front
Adobe Stock/Vasyl
911inform has many use cases, from schools and financial institutions to health-care settings and state government. The tool can provide immediate situational awareness in response to an intruder or any situation that requires quick action — locking doors, notifying law enforcement and conducting a lockdown.

“911inform is designed to integrate into every system of the building — door locks, cameras, notification systems, phones, radios — and all that information is made available to dispatch,” said Ivo Allen, 911inform CEO.

For instance, at Central Elementary School in East Brunswick, N.J., 911inform is used daily to provide situational awareness and help keep students and staff safe. School administrators say they use the platform five times a day on average for things like medical incidents, mental health crises, agitated or suspicious persons, and fights.

“When there’s an emergency, those drills that you do a couple of times a year go out the window and people forget their specialized training because they’re not used to doing it,” Allen said. “911inform is designed to be used every day."

A unique example from Central Elementary originated with a call to the East Brunswick police at about 12:30 a.m. It was triggered by 911inform’s software within the school’s geofence, which also alerted the school security administrator. With digitized maps, the police found the caller, who was on the school grounds and needed medical attention.

At another K-12 school, a student fainted, prompting a teacher to activate an alarm. That activated the 911inform system and the school’s emergency response team located the student and within seven minutes of the initial alarm, EMS had arrived and had taken over medical intervention.

“With 911inform, dispatch and police can see, for example, that the 911 call was placed in a certain room in the southeast corridor of the building,” Allen explained. “They can lock down the building and notify all staff and onsite security personnel with one touch of a button. Then direct evacuations can be made out of harm’s way while directing first responders to the right area of the building.”

Police can immediately find the room from which a call originated and then get access to any cameras in that room with a 360-degree view, allowing them to see throughout the building.

With the press of a button, 911inform can control building security, cameras, telephones, doors, lights and other systems linked to it. It also ensures compliance with emergency legislation requiring timely 911 call response, including Kari’s Law, the RAY BAUM’S Act and Alyssa’s Law.

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Preparedness
Jim McKay is the editor of Emergency Management magazine.