How can you reduce that critical period of time – from recognizing an actionable incident to initiating a comprehensive set of response actions? How can you ensure that the right people receive the right information in a matter of minutes – or even seconds? Automation. In this article, published in the most recent Critical Mass Magazine, we explain how adopting an automated, scenario-based approach can help improve the efficiency of your response plans.
Automation has made its way into many aspects of our daily life. Today, it is possible to trigger an automated series of predefined actions for any given scenario. Notifications no longer need to be simple text, email or voice alerts, but instead can be a more sophisticated, automated scenario-based approach which increases the chance of a successful outcome.
The smartphone is one of the primary technologies that has enhanced automated emergency response within the last decade. Not only do we have social media and the ability to text at our fingertips, but emergency managers can also quickly reach multiple groups of people in a multitude of ways. This can reduce the time to initiate a predefined series of emergency actions that need to be taken to respond.
Typically, the steps an emergency responder takes goes like this: they see or hear something, then decide what actions to take – make a phone call, type an email, give instructions, and all of this must be done in a crisis situation. The added stress of this series of events is likely to impact judgment, cause errors and possible delays. The process of automating emergency notifications involves pre-defining each specific action that must occur if and when an emergency happens. Each possible scenario should have a thoughtfully crafted sequence of actions that can be set into motion with a single initiation.
The full article is published in Critical Mass: Automating Emergency Notifications.
