Sponsor:UC Davis Campus Emergency Manager, with support from Information and Educational Technology

Status: This summer the Wide Area Rapid Notification (W.A.R.N.) system has been selected as the vendor of choice. In September 2007, the project team completed the confidence test, the last phase in the purchase process.

Background:

UC Davis began the process of investigating and purchasing an emergency notification system in mid-2006 as one prong in a multi-faceted approach to campus emergency management.  An automated system allows emergency response coordinators to provide accurate, timely information to any number of recipients on multiple devices (office phone, home phone, cell phone, email, etc.).

Under the direction of the campus Emergency Manager, Valerie Lucus, a committee was formed with representation from the Police Department, Operations and Maintenance, Purchasing and IET. The committee released an RFP for bid in December 2006 and several vendors submitted proposals.

Rationale:

The tragic events of Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007 highlighted the necessity of having such emergency systems on our campuses, and in May UC Davis hosted vendor presentations that were attended by representatives from several universities throughout the state.  The presentations were also made available by webcast to out-of-state participants.  During this time, an interim Emergency Bulk Email procedure was developed to provide emergency notifications in a timely manner as a temporary measure until the notification system can be implemented.

UC Davis Emergency Notification System:
The W.A.R.N. system was tested to assess its ability to meet the following requirements:

• Deliver messages through multiple media including but not limited to:  voice, voicemail boxes, blackberries, pagers, cell phones, fax numbers, and internet messaging
• Integrate with the University’s central authentication services
• Deliver messages to unlimited members and contact numbers or devices for each recipient  
• Run multiple notification scenarios simultaneously
• Deliver clear text-to-speech communications
• Receive 50,000 to 60,000 data records
• Enable recipients to respond to messages such as estimated time of arrival, fit for duty status, etc.  (The responses are then tallied into a poll for management.  The tallied information will be delivered in real-time.)
• Change or update messages or cancel a broadcast during an event
• Enable each department to create contact lists within the organization and to fully control access privileges for use and reporting
• Connect to alarm systems (such as building, environmental, etc.) and receive notifications of a threshold breech
• Provide customized incident reports on demand. These reports will include telephone numbers called, time, date, response type, number of attempts made, and status codes (line busy, message delivered, etc.).
• Monitor progress in real-time, seeing both successful and unsuccessful notifications, the number of people able to respond, etc. and instant access to monitor communications in progress
• Provide a complete history of calls demonstrating who was contacted and who was not contacted
• Conference multiple end-users into one single call.

UC Davis Emergency Notification Task Force:
Earlier this year, Chancellor Vanderhoef appointed a task force to oversee the implementation and roll-out of the campus emergency notification system.  The task force consists of representatives from the main campus and the UC Davis Medical Center.  Task Force members include:

• Associate Professor Tom Beamish, co-chair  -- College of Letters and Science: Sociology
• Executive Assistant Dean Donna Olsson, co-chair -- College of Biological Sciences
• Academic Senate Chair Linda Bisson -- Academic Senate
• Student John Dale -- Graduate Studies: Community Development
• Emergency Manager Glynis Foulk -- UC Davis Medical Center
• Student Assistant to the Chancellor Jaspreet Gill  -- Office of the Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
• Investigations Coordinator Bruce Hupe -- Offices of the Chancellor and Provost
• Project Manager Laine Keneller  -- Information and Educational Technology
• Web Consultant Elliot Lopez -- University Communications
• Director Valerie Lucus -- Emergency Management
• Director Deborah Luthi -- Risk Management
• Interim Director Andrew Majewski -- Environment Health and Safety
• Director Elizabeth Meyer -- Human Resources: Disability Services
• Business Analyst Amy Slavich -- Information and Educational Technology
• Captain Joyce Souza -- Police Department
• Director Frank Wada -- Student Registrar
• Manager Karen Williams -- Operations & Maintenance: Customer Support Center

By January 1, 2008 the task force has been asked to:

1. Establish a campus implementation schedule
2. Advise on policies and parameters for activation and overall use of system
3. Recommend methods to collect updated contact information from faculty, staff and students on a regular basis
4. Recommend an updated organizational model for the department emergency/safety coordination program to facilitate timely notifications of emergency situations to faculty, staff and students in occupied buildings
5. Review and approve a public information program to inform campus of the notification system and their role in its use.

The implementation of the notification system is expected to be complete in Spring 2008.

Contact Information:

• Valerie Lucus, UC Davis emergency planner:vjlucus@ucdavis.edu, 530 752 6463
• Laine Keneller, IET project manager:lwkeneller@ucdavis.edu, 530 754 4187