June 19, 2006 1

Emergency Communications Update

Cornell Context

• Post 9/11 Vulnerability Assessment• Post Katrina Risk Assessment• Pandemic Flu Planning

– Many initiatives underway or implemented

• Post VA tech– New initiatives– Acceleration of existing initiatives

11/29/2007 2

E-Mail Tools• Mail Blaster

– For urgent communications– Ability to distribute e-mail in 30 minutes

• Recently updated

• Tested or used very two months

• Bulk E-Mail– Important but not urgent messages– Ability to distribute e-mail in 60 minutes

11/29/2007 3

Dialer and SMS Messaging• Voice Calls (Dialer)• SMS Text Messaging• Full Scale Test on November 2007

– 2,700 Voice calls in 13 minutes– SMS Test of 15K+ messages revealed problems

• 4.5 hours for first 7,000 messages

• After last problem corrected, 8,000 messages in the last 15 minutes

– Test of outside E-Mail failed and no longer being used

11/29/2007 4

Dialer and SMS Messaging (continued)

• Test to Employees Only 11/30/07– Non-Students Only

• 5,300 SMS

• 1,900 Voice Calls

• Full Scale 12/5/07• 15,600 SMS

• 2,800 Voice Calls

11/29/2007 5

Dialer and SMS Messaging (continued)

• Opt-In Program– Thoughts of mandating participation have

disappeared as enrollment increased

• 56+% Enrollment– ITunes Card raffle for opt-in students increased

enrollment rate by 32%

11/29/2007 6

Other Initiatives

• Alert Sirens with PA System– ~ $250K for 4 sites– Radio Activated– Easily expanded

• Crawl on CUTV• New County 800 MHz • NY Alert

– www.nyalert.gov11/29/2007 7

Thoughts

• Establish authority for emergency communication– http://www.epr.cornell.edu/

incident_management/escalation.cfm

• Database is key• Train, train, train• Test, test , test

11/29/2007 8

11/29/2007 9

Thoughts

• SMS messaging– 4 legged stool

• Your connection to the provider

• Provider connection to aggregator

• Aggregators' connections to carriers

• Carrier to recipient

– No special priority for “your” emergency message– Throughput rates can vary widely

11/29/2007 10