After the terrible situation at Virginia Tech, Universities have become aware that they need methods to contact students in the event of emergencies. A regional university further felt the need after water spouts formed near the campus, which frightened students and officials, especially since they are operating out of modular buildings.
GDS Solution:
GDS paired two solutions, combining visual and auditory alarms. GDS initially deployed an IPcelerate Appliance, which provides paging over their Cisco IP phones, among other functions. Because the campus is made up of small modular buildings, each connected only by a fiber optic data network, special PoE IP speakers from Digital Acoustics were deployed in each large classroom where a phone speaker would not be loud enough.
GDS then deployed a Cisco Digital Media System. GDS installed monitors at strategic locations and small flash-based Cisco DMS players were placed behind the monitors. The system can stream any content, such as RSS feeds, videos, presentations, etc. GDS provided a turnkey solution with installation, cabling, configuration, and training.
Result:
The system is ready for an emergency, but while no emergency is active, the system is not wasted. Regular content is streamed to video locations from a central management server. The AV department is able to stream content to each discipline (specific content for the Science Building, Education, etc.) as well as general content for all monitors. The paging system can be used as a bell system, intercom, and provides features that the phone system lacks.
When an emergency occurs, both systems can be used simultaneously. Information can be immediately displayed on the monitors, such as live video, emergency alerts, etc. The paging system will allow broadcasts to the phones and IP speakers, as well as outbound calling using the phone system's telephone lines, text messages using SMS and Internet Mail, and text displays on the phones themselves.