Hurricane season is here. Hurricanes are natural disasters that can occur anywhere on the U.S. coast or in any territory along the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. This type of storm can cause massive damage and take lives due to strong winds, flooding, and storm surges. It is very important for businesses and communities to keep people informed if they are in the path of a hurricane. Monitoring the storm is crucial to be able to effectively communicate timely information to keep people safe throughout the storm.
Emergency mass notification systems can help businesses prepare for severe storms such as hurricanes and tornados by sharing real-time weather information with their personnel. In this blog, we’ll outline how mass notification systems can help your organization prepare for hurricanes.
Information Directly from the Source – Integrating with the National Weather Service
It’s important to receive information directly from the source, which is why Revolution was designed to integrate with the National Weather Service via CAP (common alerting protocol). This helps organizations and municipalities automatically monitor their area for local weather events and allows decision makers to determine the next course of action to keep their people safe and informed.
It’s also essential to share information with personnel using a variety of communication channels to ensure maximum notification delivery. For example, consider including on- and off-premise alerting tools in your communication plan to be able to reach people physically on-site or remote. Businesses who are essential such as grocery stores, hospitals, and gas stations, will use devices placed in their building. Emergency mass notifications can be sent to IP phones, desktops, mobile devices, and many more internal devices. These different effective communication channels can help your people be aware of the storm’s activity and prepare for evacuations if necessary.
Three Mobile Solutions to Help Your Team Prepare for the Hurricane Wherever They May Be Located
Notifying people with off-premise notification methods, such as mobile and email alerts, is important because it helps ensure they receive the message in ample time. Here’s three popular methods:
- • Revolution Mobile App – Empowering people with timely information can save lives during a hurricane. Revolution Mobile is an app that brings the power of emergency alerts with mass notification software directly to your recipients’ mobile devices (iOS & Android). This technology gives you the ability to alert users wherever they may be located. Revolution Mobile also supports geofencing so you can rest assured that you’re sending relevant alerts about the storm based on the users current location. You can inform users with push notifications containing weather updates directly from NWS in near real-time. Your notification can include an optional audio (including text-to-speech), image, and text information about the storm. In addition, you can also solicit feedback from your recipients with pre-canned acknowledgement options to confirm their safety and well-being.
- • SMS Text Message Service – Connect Revolution with Clickatell or Twilio SMS messaging service to send text messages with weather updates passed through Revolution from NWS.
- • Collaboration Tool Integration – You could also consider relaying storm information through your Slack or Microsoft Teams collaboration software.
Here’s a video that demonstrates how Revolution integrates with NWS:
Revolution can help your people stay safe and informed during hurricanes by providing timely life-safety information. For more information about Revolution, contact us by visiting www.syn-apps.com/contact-us or by phone at 1-866-664-6071.