Best Emergency Notification Software
Featured Emergency Notification Software At A Glance
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Learn More About Emergency Notification Software
What is Emergency Notification Software?
Emergency notification software offers mobile communication to recipients via text message or phone call. This should not be confused with emergency management software, which is a system that provides internal communication capabilities for professionals in the emergency services industry. Emergency notification software is used for emergency alerts only, so recipients will never be contacted unless it is related to an emergency situation. Due to its instantaneous nature, recipients receive important emergency messages quickly, so they can respond as soon as possible. Depending on the emergency, the urgency helps recipients take action and prevent injury from prolonged exposure to the emergency at hand. In addition, many emergency notification tools allow users to send texts with audio messages and images alongside text messages, increasing the chance that the critical notification is conveyed appropriately. For example, a recipient that is blind benefits from an audio notification over a text or image notification.
Key Benefits of Emergency Notification Software
- Offers instant calling and messaging capabilities to recipients
- Sends notifications in a variety of ways, such as image, text, and audio
- Messages can be sent to large contact groups
- Notifications and replies are automated and can be managed online
Why Use Emergency Notification Software?
Emergency notification software is the ideal solution for instant, mass communication for a variety of emergency situations. Typical situations vary between severe weather, building lockdown, evacuations, and other crisis and general safety alerts. The need for instant mass communication is important in emergency situations, as it spreads emergency awareness quickly, preventing harm and injury related to the emergency. There are several other reasons why emergency notification tools are worth implementing:
Two notification options — While text messages have greater response and engagement rates, emergency notifications can also be sent in the form of a phone call. Having more than one notification option increases the chance for recipients to receive the message.
Automation — Quickness is key when responding to emergency matters. Automation helps users send out notifications quickly without too much time spent on the curation of the notification itself.
No capacity limits — In many cases, a large group of recipients will need to receive emergency notifications. Luckily, most tools do not have a size limit, so users can send out notifications in bulk without worrying about leaving out any recipients.
Who Uses Emergency Notification Software?
Emergency notification software is primarily used by professionals responsible for public safety workers, but other uses for the software exist as well.
Public safety — Public safety professionals are typically responsible for a specific municipality. In the event of a localized crisis, such as a weather emergency, public safety professionals can use emergency notification software to contact those within the municipality.
Building managers — In the event of a building crisis, building managers can contact tenants using emergency notification software to help quickly evacuate the building.
Schools — Schools benefit from emergency notification tools to communicate to the entire school in the event of an emergency. Students, teachers, and administrators are all contacted so evacuations and awareness are communicated quickly and easily.
Emergency Notification Software Features
Emergency notification tools have several features that benefit both the user and the recipient:
Bulk notifications — Many tools don’t have a limit to how many recipients can receive emergency notifications at once. Users can contact entire contact lists or target areas without worrying about capacity limits.
Automation — Users can automate emergency messages, which helps save time when an emergency arises.
Message management — Users can control outgoing messages and incoming replies through a dashboard. From the dashboard, users can create new messages and edit existing ones. In addition, users can reply to specific recipients and see notification logs.
Resiliency — In many cases, notifications need to be sent in high-stress, less-than-ideal times. For example, power outages and cellular disruptions often complicate normal phone notifications. However, emergency notification management tools often have extra servers and methods to bypass anything that would stand in the way of reaching their contact lists.
Message formats — Notifications can be sent in a variety of ways to ensure the message is conveyed properly to everyone contacted. This includes image notifications, audio notifications, and traditional text message and phone call notifications.
Notification monitoring — Users can monitor notifications in real time to see if everyone on their contact list was properly contacted. Monitoring also measures the effectiveness of the alerts by reading open rates and response rates.
GIS-based targeted outreach — For users that don’t work with a specific contact list, GIS-based targets are an ideal way to contact people residing in specific areas of impact. This allows users to pinpoint people in certain areas that are in the area of an emergency. For example, if a tornado is forecast to hit a certain town, the emergency notification tool can use the GIS-based targeting feature to send out notifications to that town only.
Potential Issues with Emergency Notification Software
Formatting limitations in text notifications — While text messaging is an ideal way to quickly communicate to a massive amount of people, there are some restrictions. Text messages often have a maximum character limit, depending on the device and cellular service a person uses. Because of this, users cannot rely on sending long messages in the event that the message is cut off. Furthermore, many recipients’ phones may not have the capability of receiving multimedia via text. People that only have landlines are also limited in the types of messages they are able to receive. To combat this, users should ensure they craft messages that are short and concise, as well as not rely on only sending text message emergency notifications so landline users are not excluded.
