The Unification of Safety, Security & Emergency Communication

In the MessageNet Connections video found on our home page (and on the right side of this post) we try to provide the viewer with a concise introduction to the features and benefits of our product and describe how Connections addresses the safety, security and communication challenges facing organizations today. What follows is the complete text of what I said in the video with an explanation of what I said and its importance to you, interleaved on a point by point basis.

“Emergencies, such as 9/11, Virginia-Tech, the London subway bombing, hurricane Katrina, and many others, have demonstrated that text messaging and mass dialing phones does not work.”

Many emergency communication and mass-notification systems deployed now and in the past have relied heavily on mass dialing phones and text messaging as the primary or exclusive way to notify people. For all of the significant incidences mentioned above, the internet is full of documentation that these methods have failed to effectively direct or even notify the affected people.

“These methods of notification fail because they don’t notify the majority of people fast enough to protect them from danger.”

Many emergencies evolve rapidly, often requiring life saving decisions to be made within a few minutes or even just a few seconds. For example, the shooter at Virginia Tech killed over 30 people in less than 10 minutes. A simple Google search of the incident reveals that many people received the warning as late as hours after the events occurred or didn’t receive it at all.

“On-site, network based emergency communication systems are needed to deliver information and instructions fast enough and specific enough to save lives.”

Mass dialing and text messaging are essentially completely dependent on the capacity of the cell phone towers servicing the area. These towers are designed to meet the needs of normal daily communications, far less than the volume that would be required to notify everyone in an affected area during an emergency. Though these systems advertise that they can send a large number of text or calls very quickly, the cell phone towers are limited and the delivery of the phones calls and text messages can be delayed and messages can be thrown away by the towers entirely. On-site, network based emergency communication systems like MessageNet Connections, which uses the high speed enterprise communication backbone, do not have these capacity limitations and can deliver many thousands of messages in a few seconds. Additionally, because Connections communicates to both mobile and fixed-location devices, it can provide instructions unique to the needs of people in specific areas during an emergency so they have the information to make better decisions that can save their lives.

“MessageNet Connections combines your emergency communication systems, with your everyday communications forming one, unified system.”

Connections, as the name implies, communicates across the spectrum of communication systems and devices, such as PA systems, fire and life safety systems, and security systems, integrating them with your PC network and phone systems to form a very cost-effective system that presents a unified functional capability to your staff.

“By having everything integrated, your emergency communications are given immediate priority delivery, with the ability to override daily communications, ensuring that your emergency messages won’t be drowned out by daily communications.”

As people become aware of impending danger, their stress levels quickly rise. This effect greatly reduces people’s ability to process information effectively and make decisions that can save their lives. By using the same communication equipment for emergencies that’s used for daily purposes means that Connections will suppress normal communications during the delivery of high priority messages reducing the stress and confusion.

“And, because your staff is using Connections daily, you know the system works and you can be confident that your staff will know how to operate it in an emergency.”

Study after study has shown that people under stress fail at executing procedures that they are not used to doing. By unifying emergency and daily communications under the same functional system, your staff can use the same skills and behavior when communicating and responding to emergencies that they use daily.

“MessageNet Connections is a multi-user system that allows your staff to send important messages from almost any device through a central system to virtually any combination of other devices.”

MessageNet Connections integrates your existing phone systems, cell phones, PA systems, fire and life safety systems, security systems, camera surveillance systems, and e-mail systems with panic buttons, sensors and your network of PCs.

“In addition to emergency communications, Connections is a great tool for everyday communications as well. It lets you get the most out of your investment in existing communications systems and appliances.”

Because Connections allows you to integrate your disparate communication, safety and security systems into one unified system you derive new synergies between these systems and deliver a real return on investment.