Southeast continues to investigate and evaluate many emergency text messaging programs with plans to select a program and to allow students, faculty and staff to voluntarily sign up for the program in the future.

In addition, we are in the process of implementing an indoor personal announcement system for emergency purposes.  The implementation process has several phases for installation over a period of several years.  The first goal will be to implement the personal announcement system in the residence halls.

Southeast currently relies on a multitude of layered communication tools to relay emergency information, including:

• An outdoor warning system which utilizes both a system of alert sirens and can also be voice-activated to provide specific information. 
• An “Urgent Alert” box can be immediately posted to the primary audience pages of the University’s Web site at www.semo.edu.  This alert box provides the emergency message along with links to pages that can provide additional background information. 
• An emergency alert message can be posted within the student portal, “My Southeast,” so students accessing their e-mail will be automatically notified. 
• Emergency e-mail messages can be sent out to all students, faculty and staff.
• All regional media can be notified of any emergency situations so the campus community can access that information through a radio or television station (see the list of media outlets at  http://www.semo.edu/safety/communication.htm) 
• Students, faculty and staff who have land-line telephones on the campus can be notified of emergency communications through an audix messaging system on their phones.

In working with AT&T, safety officials at Southeast have learned that e-mail text messaging systems use consumer gateways to send alert notification messages.  We have been advised by AT&T that the consumer e-mail gateway is unsuitable for bulk or urgent notifications.  These gateways or cell towers are subject to tens of millions of SPAM messages each day.  Alert notification messages behave nearly identically to SPAM messages and could be blocked by the SPAM control systems in the network.

According to AT&T, text messaging capacity limitations prevent it from being employed as an emergency broadcast solution.  While sufficient capacity exists at local levels for normal messaging delivery, emergency broadcast messages cause major congestion in the network, which may result in delayed delivery of messages or blocking of text messages and voice traffic.  AT&T has advised us that all major wireless carriers have concluded that text messaging and the consumer e-mail messaging gateways are unsuitable for application-generated bulk messaging, urgent notifications or emergency broadcast.

Southeast is anxiously awaiting the implementation of a federal plan to create a nationwide emergency alert system using text messages delivered to cell phones.  This new plan stems from the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, a 2006 federal law that requires upgrades to the nation’s emergency alert system.  The act tasked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with coming up with new ways to alert the public about emergencies.  The alerts would be delivered with a unique audio signature of “vibration cadence,” and the service is projected to be in place by 2010.

So, although Southeast currently is evaluating text-messaging systems, we will continue to rely on a full cadre of emergency notification devices and we will continue to investigate new technology and new communication tools which might greatly increase the timeliness and reliability of delivery of emergency messages.

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