OCTOBER 28, 2008 • eWeekly is best viewed in your browser. • Feel free to forward eWeekly to a friend.

Educause will be rolling out a look at proven campus emergency preparedness solutions in Orlando at its  2008 conference from October 28–31—a treasure trove of case studies for any institution looking to prevent a campus disaster or tragedy.

One session is based on insights gleaned from an IT campus security summit that Educause put together this past August with a number of colleges and universities.  “Emergency preparedness has become an enterprise-wide concern,” says Valerie Lucus, emergency manager at University of California, Davis. “People who are responsible for pieces of the strategy—emergency coordinators, public safety officers, risk managers, legal counsel, student affairs officers, CIOs/CBOs/CFOs—need to talk with one another.” Educause is keen on fostering dialogue and collaboration among institutions on the role of IT in campus security.

IT-driven security solutions already turning heads include:

Each fall, the University of Maryland raises awareness about campus safety during an Emergency Preparedness Week.  According to Carrie Lee Page, program coordinator with the Educause Learning Initiative, “The word gets spread through social networking sites, newspaper articles, calendar postings, public service announcements at games and advertisements at campus eateries.” Campus kiosks also offer instructions on how to sign up for emergency text alerts. And the university reaches out with a Facebook page as well.

Texas A&M: University officials collaborate with local authorities on a single emergency operations center for their region. Texas A&M, the towns of Bryan and College Station, and Brazos County have all committed to work from the same emergency operations center when a disaster hits, Page says. Under the plan, each entity is represented by two people who work the emergency from the same, centralized facility.

University of Iowa has created its own emergency “HawkAlert” pages on Facebook and MySpace. The web media provides the university with a back-up communications channel, and ensures that the campus community can secure official information during an emergency.  

University of California, Berkeley has developed a public domain, web-based tool that helps administrators brainstorm and collaborate on emergency preparedness contingency plans. Specifically, the software helps any college or university develop plans for avoiding and minimizing emergencies. Plus, the tool can be used to develop contingency plans for continuing teaching, research, service and institution support functions in the midst of an emergency or disaster.

Cornell University is currently using Google Earth software to get a birds-eye view of campus security vulnerabilities. Campus police are able to use the software to get a quick overview of the entire campus, or drill-down to a specific problem at the sidewalk level. “The system could help officers plot crime locations, create maps of traffic areas or overlay walking paths onto areas of increased crime,” Page says.

Brigham Young University/Virginia Tech have both deployed multimedia communication consoles that enable campus officials to quickly broadcast alerts in multiple media formats, Page says. Typed emergency alerts are automatically converted to text, email, voice and other communication formats by the system, as are alerts first recorded on audio.