During an emergency like Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of the Caribbean, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeastern part of the U.S., government-state communications are vital in order to ensure the safety of citizens that are experiencing such a catastrophe. As phone and Internet connections can be lost due to physical destruction as well as the 911 call centers, which may become overloaded with calls to the point that some are not able to be attended to, it is important that these issues are prepared for before disaster strikes.
GovDelivery, a provider of public sector digital communications, revealed a case study about how Ocean City, Maryland’s digital communication platform matched up to Hurricane Sandy, further enforcing the notion of communication vitality. Ocean City was able to use the GovDelivery Digital Communication Management (DCM (News - Alert) (News - Alert)) to improve the communication between government-to-citizen, allowing the state to provide enhanced levels of protection from potential death or destruction during the Atlantic Coast 2012 hurricane season.
The DCM platform provides government cities with an emergency notification feature that enables them to contact all citizens with registered numbers who are located in an area that is being affected by a storm or emergency. Citizens can also expand their communication paths by signing up to GovDelivery and providing emergency contacts, special household heath needs, work contact information and e-mail, which increases the chances of their overall safety and awareness.
Giva, a provider of cloud-based solutions, was also used during Hurricane Sandy when 911 call centers became overloaded and swarmed. During a crisis call centers can become swarmed, which can affect how quickly or even the chances of a caller reaching a live agent. In a situation like a hurricane, the inability to reach a 911 agent can be the deciding factor between life or death, which is why New Jersey switched its 211 (another number residents can call in case of an emergency) services over to a cloud-based service . After the hurricane hit, Giva’s cloud-based services allowed the 211 call centers to have much more control over where the calls were directed, keep records of callers and most importantly, ensure that everyone was helped as quickly as possible.
Just like Giva’s product, GovDelivery is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News - Alert) (News - Alert)) cloud-based application that can be accessed anywhere there is Internet, allowing cities to use voice, answering machine protect, text-to-speech and group sending to communicate with their citizens. The group sending features allows cities to mass dial thousands of callers in a specific geographical location in an urgent situation, despite the limitations that telephone companies may place on the amount of calls you can make. Since emergencies can develop and grow in a matter of a few seconds, the quicker the state can respond can decrease the chances of citizens being harmed, or worse, losing their life.
With this revolution in the government underway we can see how cloud-based communication solutions even have the potential to save lives. It seems that aside from being used to increase the efficiency and productivity of enterprises, when applied to situations such as natural disasters, the new discoveries in the communication sector prove to be even more significant to humanity.
For more information about GovDelivery, click here.
Edited by Allison Boccamazzo