Get the word outCommunicating to the campus during an emergency

Brett Pollak@brettcpollak

#uccsc2012

@campusweboffice

AgendaOverview of emergency reporting structure

Classifications of emergencies

Communication mechanisms

Recent case study

Improvements needed

Open discussion

What we plan for…

What it ends up being…

Plan for likely scenariosBasis for response based in Incident Command System (ICS)

• Creates a synthetic organization in the time of crisis

Incident Commander

Operations Planning Logistics Finance & Administration

Information Officer Liaison Officer

Safety Officer

Emergency Operations Center

Severity 1 (low)

Severity 2 (medium)

Severity 3 (high)

Emergency Types

Examples: • H1N1 Swine Flu, • Severe storms predicted or possible flooding

Communications may contain info for “preventative measures”

Severity 1 (low)

Communication

Severity 1 (low)

Severity 1 (low)

Severity 1 (low)

Severity 1 (low)

Register for notifications

Register for notifications

Register for notifications

Other Communication Channels

Channel 1610 (888) 308-8273

Examples:• Large magnitude earthquake • Fire approaching campus, etc.

Some damage or affect to the campus (classes closed) may be immediately evident or likely to be evident in the near future

Severity 2 (medium)

Severity 2 (medium)

Severity 2 (medium/high)

Severity 2 (medium/high)

Severity 2 (medium/high)

Severity 2 (medium/high)

DRAFT

<script src= "http://ucsd.edu/common/_emergency‐broadcast/message.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 

Code to get banner

Examples:• Active on-campus shooter

• Large scale on-campus fire, or other high impact incident

Could potentially capture the attention of a state-wide, national, or international audience.

Severity 3 (high)

UCSD home page becomes the emergency status page

– Ensures viewers do not miss info updates– Lightweight: optimized to handle increased

Web traffic– ucsd.edu/emergency would point here

Severity 3 (high) Treatment

Examples:• Power Failures in datacenter• Fire or earthquake disables datacenter

Backup generator

Can run for ~4 hours before refueling

Redundancy

Copy of CMS content & websites sent to UCOP each morning at 5:00 AM

Limited number of accounts created (CMS not behind SSO)

Utility created to switch DNS so content under ucsd.edu is being delivered from UCOP Web server environment.

Disaster Recovery

Sept. 8, 2011• Power outage across Southern CA• Power outage duration: ~20 hours

Summary• Generators kicked in

– No downtime

• Cell towers became overloaded– Communication issues

• Batteries needed to be charged via car chargers

• Concerns about family safety balanced with campus safety

Case study

Utilize social media

Rock solid back channel for Communications

Utilizing crowdsourcing to report status

Better ‘local’ communication channels

What we can do better