The Early Warning Networks - School ALERT™

EWN’s School ALERT™ is a unique service delivered free of charge to schools to help protect students, staff and property. EWN School ALERT™ is a multi-channel messaging system that provides school administrators the ability to instantly broadcast alerts and notifications to parents, staff and students. Messages can be sent based on physical location (name, street, post code, town or map location) or any other grouping type such as class, soccer team etc. These can then be sent across one or multiple channels including:

Desktop ALERT™ for schools
Mobile (SMS generally)
Phone
Email
Messaging
 

School administrators are not required to install any software or hardware or spend a cent. Parents and the community register to the system through Desktop ALERTÔ for schools. This is provided free of charge. Desktop ALERTÔ for schools can also carry emergency alerts and notifications issued by BOM, SES, police and other emergency providers. At all times parents, students and users of Desktop ALERTÔ for schools control how, when and from whom they wish to receive notifications from. This is a major step forwards in protecting families and the community and is the first of its kind in the world. EWN’s School ALERT is designed to:

• Save and protect lives

• Improve personal and community security

• Protect property

• Better manage community and group communications, and

• Always be free to schools, the public and emergency services
   

Typical instances where School ALERT might be employed:

• Missing person/s

• Predator Alert

• Transportation issues (Floods, bus strikes etc)

• Scheduling changes (notification of change of sports venues/times, school events etc)

Who can send ALERTS? A management console has already been created for your school. If your school wishes access to this, the schools senior administrator will be authenticated and provided secure access to your own School ALERT system. From there the Administrator can register other administrators within their network (School) and apply permissions to what groups and message types they can send.


Security It is anticipated that most homes will register to the ALERT system. Local administrators to the system such as SES and police will all be authenticated and only able to access those regions or districts managed by their LAC (Local Area Command). Only those administrators ‘known’ to the system can use it.

In the majority of cases the information registered to ALERT is the same as listed in the white pages. ALERT lists are not distributed and cannot be downloaded.EWN is operated from secure servers …….


Special NeedsThere may be special circumstances where a household might register a disability into the system. This means in time of emergency the responding agency is better prepared, an event that could save lives. Likewise we hope to incorporate other information such as:

Pools (for fire fighting)
Difficult driveways/geography
Number of people in household
Pets
AccessAdministrators can securely access the system from any computer connected to the Internet. This means that if required an Administrator can send messages from their home computer if required. In times of emergencies this saves valuable time in broadcasting ALERTS.
EWN Schools ALERT™ provides schools with an invaluable communications and management tool.

Emergency messages, perhaps in collaboration with police
Venue and scheduling changes
School related transport issues.
Safety notices
Predator alerts
Absentee/missing notices
Newsletters and notices EWN is a multi-channel ALERT system that provides users  of the system the ability to
instantly and simultaneously broadcast alerts and notifications to individuals, groups, or person/s
within a specific area over multiple communication mediums. The system is geographically aware.
This means those people needing the information, get it. Messages can be sent sensitive to physical
locations (name, street, postcode, town or map location) or any other grouping type the authority
designates. The Graphical Information System provides administrators the ability to draw a target
area over detailed mapping to send a notification via several methodologies. Messages can then be
sent across one or more of the channels described.
• Desktop ALERT™
• Mobile via SMS /pagers
• Phone
• email
• Web

No software needs to be installed and administrators and staff can be set up and operational within a matter of minutes. The system is being used successfully in Australia and the attached Administrators Guide describes how the system is currently deployed there. In addition the users guide for Desktop ALERT™ is attached here. EWN is multilingual and through EWN's partnership with Google the system is now available world wide and partners are sought in the following countries and regions:

New Zealand
Pacific Islands
South Africa
Canada
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Norway
Sweden
Spain
Italy
Belgium
Malaysia/Thai/etc
United States
China
South Korea
Pakistan
India
Taiwan
Japan
Russia
Indonesia
Singapore
South America

Should you wish to find out more email me at kerry@waspz.com, phone 61 7 55904173 or mobile 0403147197

Here in Australia we have partnered with Australia’s largest car/home insurer to provide the system to their members with the insurer acting as a sponsor so that anyone can use it. We are working with  police, federal and state governments, councils and water/energy utilities. 

The Australian Early Warning Network (EWN) offers free use of its multi channel, GIS based based notification network for critical and emergency alerts. This is a world class system which EWN is offering for free - like Google we make money from sponsors and advertising (But users will have to pay monthly usage of the system for notifications of other types - burst water mains, power outages etc).

Amongst many other emergency scenarios, EWN currently tracks severe weather events and uses the system to alert residents directly in the path of a storm with potential for hail, flash flooding or damaging winds. People can elect to receive alerts via mobile phone, pager, email and desktopALERT™, many thousands have already registered and more join each day. EWN have sent out tens of thousands of alerts via SMS and even more through its desktopALERT™ system.


 

EWN offers authorities the opportunity to access and use the system free in emergencies. When people register to receive alerts (Which is free to the public), their location is fixed via latitude and Longitude. The example above illustrates how our EWN Alert Managers draw the projected path of a hail or severe storm event, it could be any shape and a radius tool is available as well for bomb threats, chemical/terrorist etc). Once the area is selected, everyone registered in that area will be alerted. Likewise, authorized council personnel can use the system in the same way. (Note this is small excerpt which changes depending on the recipient.)

There are numerous other commercial opportunities and the list is pretty endless. Other examples in Australia might be:

Hospitals – staff communications
Newspapers/media (Present local news thru DEsktopALERT – revenue from advertising)
Unions ie public service,etc to communicate withy members
activist/special interest groups
Defence
Airlines/Aviation/transport
Dept of Agriculture - ie horse flu pandemic
Football and sports clubs (Major league clubs)
Temporary travel coverage
Establishment of local business directories accessed from DesktopALERT including local news. DesktopALERT knows where the member is.
Banks and financial institutions
etc. etc.

When we add the GPS tracking (Which is just a discussion with Nokia and others to connect to their network) to alert people on the move, this will open up a whole new ball game.