HIGHER EDUCATION SAFETY
Situation
Salisbury University, located in Salisbury, Maryland, southeast of Baltimore and Washington, D.C., offers a wide range of graduate and undergraduate degrees, plus doctoral programs in nursing and education. The university has experienced rapid growth since the early 2000s and has 6,000+ students currently enrolled. Along with a large campus consisting of over 200 acres, the campus has $350 million in new education and athletics facilities hosting large groups of students, athletes, families, and community members.
Problem
The dangers to students on campus have never been more extreme: civil unrest, active shooters, weather warnings, and other dangerous incidents drive the need to keep the campus informed. The wide variety of dangers complicates the way officials communicate the appropriate response to the university community.
The university campus was relying on two existing tone-only sirens responsible for mass notifications and emergency communications for the entire campus (over 0.33 square miles). Currently, the only method of activating these sirens requires a security team member to access the siren on the roof of each building. This wastes valuable time and has proven inconvenient in times of emergencies.
Solution
Genasys provided a state-of-the-art outdoor notification system that integrates with software systems already installed on the campus. With the addition of highly intelligible, outdoor speakers, these institutions upgraded their outdoor notification capabilities immediately.
Multiple Genasys ACOUSTICS 360XL-2 stacks (supplemented with Genasys Protect to interface with the existing campus emergency notification software) were installed to cover the entire campus with loud, clear communications messaging. Remote activation capabilities allow for rapid deployment of messages for any situation that may arise. Additionally, messaging can be broadcast in multiple languages.
Emergency and non-emergency communications can be heard across campus, informing and protecting students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Even during campus conferences with crowds present or for football games and other big events, broadcasts can be heard over the noise of the crowd. With ACOUSTICS and Protect, the University can reach everyone, even if not connected to a device, to keep people protected.
Results
Students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors can all be quickly and clearly notified when an emergency is unfolding. With the use of two ACOUSTICS 360 XL-2 stacks, supplemented with Genasys Protect used to interface with the campus’ Motorola RAVE software, ACOUSTICS speaker arrays utilizing Waveguide Technology, clear voice messaging, featuring best-in-class voice intelligibility, can be delivered over long distances optimized for the primary range of human hearing even above background noise.
ACOUSTICS speakers protect Salisbury University’s 75 buildings, events centers, and more, spread out over 200 acres on a mostly suburban campus. With Genasys Protect, students, staff and visitors can be better protected and informed.
