April 8, 2010
Emergency communications: A growing set of tools to keep campus community informed
The University has developed an impressive set of tools for communicating in an emergency, and staff are hard at work finding ways to make the UW’s information infrastructure more resilient.
“We began to look seriously at communicating in an emergency after the Virginia Tech murders,” said Scott Mah, associate vice president in UW Technology, in remarks before the Web Council. “It became clear that we had developed a good emergency plan but it lacked detail on communications.” He and Norm Arkans, associate vice president for media relations and communications, led a broad-based team that developed plans for communicating during a crisis. As events unfold and technology changes, that plan is frequently reviewed and improved.
Central to the plan is the UW Alert system. Individuals may sign up to receive alerts on their cell phone and through e-mail. The UW Alert system is intended to notify members of the community quickly about the highest priority threats to health and safety. One important virtue is that the system does not rely on any campus infrastructure to work.
“We’ve realized that a next step will be to make the system more community based,” Mah said. “In the future, users will be able to sign up to receive messages that pertain to one or all of our three campuses. We also plan to allow users to receive alerts on multiple mobile devices. These changes should be in place by fall 2010.”
The UW Alert messages are posted to Facebook and Twitter. There is also a UW Alert Web site, and a UW Information telephone line (206-897-4636 or 1-866-897-4636) carrying the same information. Color-coded alert banners will appear on the Home Page, MyUW and UWIN in case of an alert; the code that generates these banners is also available to any campus unit that wants it (e-mail uweb@uw.edu). The UW Alert page is hosted out-of-area, should the UW computing infrastructure be damaged.
The University also is able to use loudspeakers located across campus to inform people in the event of an emergency, and a project is under way to upgrade campus building fire alarm systems to permit the transmission of voice messages to people in most buildings in the future.
UW Technology has developed two “continuity kits,” to help units plan for what they might do if key people cannot come to campus for an extended period. The Academic Continuity Kit is designed for instructional faculty, while the Administrative Business Continuity Kit is designed for staff and administrators. The kits are designed to spur discussions about emergency preparedness and offer suggestions for ways to keep the University “working” in an emergency.
UW Technology also is developing plans to make the UW’s Web systems more resilient, through backups and contingency planning. One important move under consideration is developing a relationship or contract with some entity outside the region that can host critical segments of the UW’s Web infrastructure. This could come in the form of mutual relationships with other universities, which presumably could occur with minimal cost.
For units that are developing their own contingency plans, Mah pointed out that UW Technology provides managed servers at a reasonable cost, and also has three locations at which units can co-locate their own servers.
People with questions about emergency communications and campus information infrastructure can contact Mah at tech-avp@uw.edu, or 206-543-5411.
