By Brooke Siefker, Emergency Management Specialist
As emergency managers and first responders, we are responsible for evacuating citizens, communicating with other agencies, protecting property, and managing the flow of resources needed by a population in flux. During a hurricane or other emergency disaster, actionable information is crucial to your residents, businesses, and the visitors traveling through your area.
How do you effectively engage and communicate with the people in your direct circle of influence who rely on your guidance?
Today’s mass notification systems are highly effective at getting out broad, general messages, warnings, and safety information to massive audiences, but aren’t capable of more nuanced, location-specific messaging that can include:
- Evacuation routes, road closures, or infrastructure damage requiring rerouting for specific areas or zones
- Shelter locations, changes in shelter status, or pet/livestock information
- Model-based changes to flood path or other hyperlocal impediments
- Locations for medical relief, sandbag stations, or emergency food and water stations
- Repopulation status for those who have left your area
Advanced Technology Delivers Location-Specific Emergency Information to Those That Need It Most
As a strong adjunct to your mass notification system, Genasys Protect, including ALERT and EVAC offers communications solutions that allows your emergency responders to engage residents, businesses, and evacuees traveling through your area with a direct line of communication.
Not only are you able to reach a wide audience through SMS, social media, Cell Broadcasting, etc., but by supplementing with a community website and application, you gain the ability to display detailed evacuation information on an interactive map and engage your community with actionable information, warnings, and site-specific support.
Engage Your Community with Real-Time Information
Genasys ALERT and EVAC ensure residents can access critical updates and provide them with situational awareness so they can make informed decisions during a crisis like a hurricane. Using an intuitive and user-friendly interface, the public facing map and mobile app can provide:
- Community outreach opportunities for pre-planning and training.
- The ease of pre-scripted messaging for warnings that can be activated in a plug-and-play manner with no valuable time needed during an emergency.
- Providing a trusted source of reliable information while gaining community support.
Our technology connects the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and first responders directly to residents in the affected areas where information can be shared as the situation evolves. Pre-scripted evacuation orders, emergency shelter locations, traffic routes and road closures can all be communicated through a zone-defined mapping system allowing residents to have instant access to lifesaving information.
Genasys Engages Your Community with Immediate Impact
Emergency managers often face tight time constraints when preparing for hurricanes, flooding, and other natural disasters as these events can develop rapidly, leaving little room for extensive planning and response.
With Genasys ALERT and EVAC, your team can create incident models allowing you to pinpoint zones and residents that are in immediate danger and target your communications and response to the most high-risk areas of your community.
Genasys’ powerful communications platform allows you and your team to enhance community participation, improve situational monitoring and resource mobilization, and support public awareness and readiness during a hurricane. This has extraordinary benefits in overall community engagement when you need it most.
Sharing Your Common Operating Picture Keeps Residents Safe and Engaged!
When it matters most, Genasys gives you and your team the peace of mind knowing you have the best communications tool available to protect and inform your communities.
Genasys provides a complete platform for crisis management that offers comprehensive, real-time tools, that support first responders and emergency managers during emergent situations, such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and man-made disasters.
Contact Genasys to learn more about Genasys or schedule a demo for ALERT and EVAC.
