UM system emergency alert progresses
New emergency alert system will be in place as early as November.
Published Oct. 16, 2007
As MU continues to phase in new mediums for alerting students and faculty about emergencies, another school using the same system reported slow sign-ups for emergency text message alerts.
The four UM system campuses have been progressing in their development of an updated emergency alert system through their partnership with the National Notification Network, also known
as 3n.
MU Information Technology Director Terry Robb said the project is in motion and should be ready by early November. The first step will be a mass upload of student
information.
Students will use myZou to update their personal information with their cell phone number and text message number, if it differs from their cell phone, to receive text message alerts from the
university.
"MyZou will be the ultimate source of info," Robb said. "They (students) will use myZou to tell our database 'This is how we would like to be contacted,' and the database stores it."
The school is looking into how other schools have implemented the system.
Among these schools is Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, which inspired a push for new alerts systems after a gunman killed 32 people on the campus in April.
St. John's University spokesman Dominic Scianna said their new system, which is similar, helped during an incident with a gunman on campus on
Sept. 26.
According to The Associated Press, students reported seeing a masked man walking around campus with a rifle.
No one was injured or killed.
"The morning of the incident we had had on campus, we had 2,100 students who signed up," Scianna said. "Even though we had 2,100 registered at the time, word by mouth helped get the word across."
Since the incident, the number of students signed up for the program has grown to 9,467, he said.
Scianna said the students were very appreciative of receiving the message and were able to contact their parents to let them know what was
going on.
The alert was sent using text messages, voice mail and an emergency hotline.
When the new system is in place, MU students would be alerted of an emergency via voice mail on cell phones and landlines, text messages and school or personal
e-mail.
The UM system and 3n signed a three-year contract that will be renewed each year of the contract.
Robb said the university would continue to look for new technologies to alert students while under contract
with 3n.
Purple Tree Technologies, a Columbia-based company, is conducting a pilot test in November with warning devices placed around
campus.
The devices will receive a typed message via wireless signal or Ethernet and display it on a screen.
Purple Tree is also working with the university to use a cellular tower to communicate an emergency message to everyone within range of
tower.
According to the company's Web site, Purple Tree is the developer of the Emergency Alert Response System, which uses cell phone towers to provide emergency
alerts.
Robb said the earliest the technology for the cell tower would be available would be March of next year, but if everything worked with the warning devices in November, the university could put it into place immediately.
"We could put that in at any time," Robb said. "I think the technology is ready
to go."