Snowmageddon Creates Avalanche of Emergency Alert Subscriptions

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 02/17/10

Institutions located in the northeastern part of the country found an uptick in the number of new subscribers for their emergency alert services during the first week of February--as "Snowmageddon" struck. Emergency alert vendor Omnilert said that schools using the service sent 5 million text messages and delivered a million voice calls and e-mails during the week. New users--students, staff, and faculty--were signing up for alerts at the rate of one every other second.

Annemarie Mountz, assistant director of public information at Penn State, said the university had roughly 65,000 subscribers to their PSUTXT messages on e2Campus. Within a short period nearly 6,000 additional people had signed up for the service. "We have 24 separate campuses across Pennsylvania and many of them lie in areas that were hit with heavy snow and blizzard conditions," she explained. "They each used e2Campus multiple times to send an alert to their respective campus communities to tell them that classes were delayed or cancelled."

Penn State also tied e2Campus to Twitter and Facebook pages. "Interestingly, people were commenting on the Facebook post from e2Campus, which provided us feedback in a new dimension," Mountz said.

The University of Maryland in Baltimore had to close for five days due to snow conditions. "In past events, we found a high degree of unreliability with some of the TV stations," said Robert Rowan, emergency management director. "Sometimes they get the message. Sometimes they do not. And occasionally, the messages get distorted a little bit. Then we added e2Campus and have had very good response with it. Our entire campus population of more than 10,000 people gets the alerts in a matter of a few minutes. It broadcasts our message directly to their cell phones, home phones, and e-mail accounts. We have been very pleased with e2Campus."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • interconnected cloud icons with glowing lines on a gradient blue backdrop

    Report: Cloud Certifications Bring Biggest Salary Payoff

    It pays to be conversant in cloud, according to a new study from Skillsoft The company's annual IT skills and salary survey report found that the top three certifications resulting in the highest payoffs salarywise are for skills in the cloud, specifically related to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Nutanix.

  • AI-inspired background pattern with geometric shapes and fine lines in muted blue and gray on a dark background

    IBM Releases Granite 3.0 Family of Advanced AI Models

    IBM has introduced its most advanced family of AI models to date, Granite 3.0, at its annual TechXchange event. The new models were developed to provide a combination of performance, flexibility, and autonomy that outperforms or matches similarly sized models from leading providers on a range of benchmarks.

  • landscape photo with an AI rubber stamp on top

    California AI Watermarking Bill Garners OpenAI Support

    ChatGPT creator OpenAI is backing a California bill that would require tech companies to label AI-generated content in the form of a digital "watermark." The proposed legislation, known as the "California Digital Content Provenance Standards" (AB 3211), aims to ensure transparency in digital media by identifying content created through artificial intelligence. This requirement would apply to a broad range of AI-generated material, from harmless memes to deepfakes that could be used to spread misinformation about political candidates.

  • happy woman sitting in front of computer

    Delightful Progress: Kuali's Legacy of Community and Leadership

    CEO Joel Dehlin updates us on Kuali today, and how it has thrived as a software company that succeeds in the tech marketplace while maintaining the community values envisioned in higher education years ago.