Case Study - Mass Notification Systems
Colleges
Community College, Southeast Texas
Background
A community college in Texas with an enrollment of approximately 12,000
students is comprised of two campuses, East Campus (main) and West Campus,
and an annex, South Annex. There are 47 buildings with 916 classrooms and
laboratories.
The Needs
The factors that prompted this Texas college to purchase a Mass Notification
System (MNS) include:
• The means to send an alert quickly and efficiently in the event of a natural disaster or inclement weather, such as a tornado, which struck the college several years ago, killing one of their professors
• Heavy concentration of chemical plants
• General emergency notification concerns
The Solution
The Texas community college selected Cooper Notification’s SAFEPATH and
WAVES (Wireless Audio Visual Emergency System) for their indoor and outdoor
MNS. This indoor and outdoor MNS enables the campus’ safety and security
department to:
• Rapidly alert, warn and inform students, faculty and staff of an imminent danger
• Efficiently manage their response before, during and after a disaster
• Broadcast live and recorded voice messages via secure networks
• Alert the affected areas, using zones and sub zones to send the right message to the right person without causing panic or disturbing those who are unaffected by the threat
The system is designed to reach all students, faculty and staff who are outside,
in class or off-campus.
The components of the MNS installed include an Integrated Base Station
(IBS), the primary control station for the indoor/outdoor MNS, nine secure
radio transceivers based on digital Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum
(FHSS) technology at 2.4 GHz, nine SAFEPATH individual building emergency
notification systems, 50 exterior supervised horn loudspeakers and 300 speaker
and speaker/strobe combinations. The system has been installed in 10 buildings
on West Campus and East Campus. Three additional building systems on the
East and West Campuses are currently under construction. In the near future,
the college is adding the system to four more buildings on both the East and
West campuses, and will eventually install the system in every building on East
Campus, West Campus and South Annex.
“The college’s goal is to cover every building with the system and be able
to contact every person on the campuses and annex. The buildings under
construction and the buildings awaiting approval are being prepped to install
the (MadahCom) system,” Nick Thompson, Commercial Sales and Installation
Manager, The Safeguard System, Inc.
www.coopernotification.com
6
Colleges
Community College, Southeast Texas
The Result
The next time a disaster strikes, this Texas college has an MNS that can help
administrators protect, alert and inform their students, faculty, staff and visitors,
and direct them to safety. Four key features of the college’s new MNS include:
1. Timeliness: WAVES can provide an alert to the targeted campus population as quickly as possible and respond in a time-scale that’s relevant to the emergency.
2. Infrastructure Independence: WAVES is not reliant on infrastructure systems. In many emergencies the grid power goes down, which also takes down the cell phone system (and SMS).
3. Zoning: WAVES is zoneable, the ability to alert and inform people in multiple areas with different instructions that could change rapidly. It can also be activated in just the specific threat areas, preventing unnecessary panic and chaos.
4. Intrusive: The emergency message must get through, so one should not be able to turn it off. Often in classroom settings, cell phones are turned off or are on silent. However, a loud voice message broadcasted from an indoor or outdoor speaker optimizes the chances of a person hearing the message since it cannot be shut off.