Community Alert: A Customizable 911 Emergency Alert System
The most valuable things many people have in life are home and family. Indeed, we spend our lives working to make the perfect home environment, only to have it whisked away as the result of a single emergency. These days, city/county alert systems tend to be 0ver-burdened, and you don’t always know how long it will take the First Responders to arrive.
I know this first hand. I live in a remote mountain community. If there is a need for emergency services, it can take more than an hour to get First Responders on the scene. Calling 911 doesn’t really do much good if it takes emergency services that much time to arrive. So, like many communities, we created a volunteer fire department to address this need. Yet as the discussion progressed about how we would contact people (think phone relay) in such an event, it occurred to me that there was a better way.
And so it was that we set out to write the Community Alert System. Think of it as a fully-configurable, community-based 911 system controlled by your local HOA, or a group of residents of your choosing. The concept is pretty basic: We register your location using GPS coordinates tied to an address and a phone number. When a call comes in, the system first determines that the call is from a registered user, then asks the user if they would like to add a recording to the message. This is optional. If no button is pressed or message entered the system moves on and notifies local First Responders that are just a few yards — rather than a few miles — away.
Ultimately, your “community” is whatever you define it to be. Whether that constitutes the homes in your area, or a group of friends and/or family. So the Community Alert System allows you to define your own first responders!
Alert System Features
- Phone-based programmable voice system provides added layer of security. Only registered users may use the system.
- Our ‘One Touch Alert’ feature invokes the system from the single touch of a button.
- You decide who is called, and in what order.
- System notifies emergency services of the exact location.
- Built-in Inventory, Calendar and Newsletter management systems.
- Integrated Geolocation binds phone numbers to GPS coordinates.
- Integrated Inventory Manager makes it easy to manage equipment over a wide area.
- Multiple entry points (web, voice, sms) make it simple to initiate an event.
- Events and their locations are posted to the website on the map.
- Traffic and directions are generated from designated “center” to event location.
- System calculates nearest emergency resource to the event, and prioritizes their notification.