A high-rise fire in Chicago. Homeland security’s color-coded terror alert system. Routine evacuation of airport terminals. Notification of potential bad weather to office workers in southern Florida. Before that, the tragedy of New York’s World Trade Center.
Security executives and law enforcement officials now realize that community alerts, warnings and evacuation announcements must be accurate, delivered very quickly, easily understood and sent in a diversity of ways. Even more challenging, such messages many times must vary in their content based on the location of people (the east building or floor seven vs. the north building or floor 38) and the role of people impacted by the warning or involved in the evacuation.