Second trial of Orange Alert to test system
For the second time this semester, Syracuse University will be conducting a test of the Orange Alert Campus Crisis Alert Notification System. The test will take place today at 8 a.m.
The Department of Public Safety will send out 30,000 e-mails and 15,000 text messages to the university community. The goal is to have the messages received by all individuals within 10 minutes, said Kevin Morrow, director of news services.
‘Ideally, we want to do measurements to make sure the e-mails and texts get to all the recipients we have identified in a timely fashion,’ Morrow said.
The test is happening now because the university has been working to fix the glitches that plagued the first test. Conducting a test later in the semester would have interrupted the closing of classes and students’ preparation for finals, Morrow said.
An e-mail was sent to students Tuesday to notify them of the upcoming test. The preliminary notification was part of the overall test, said Anthony Callisto, director of DPS. More than 31,000 notifications were successfully sent out.
The last Orange Alert test, which took place in early February, involved a barrage of e-mails, text messages and phone calls. Unlike the previous test, this one will not require a response to the notification.
Thursday’s test will only contact students through e-mails and text messages because these are the most efficient means of communication, Morrow said.
Since the first test, DPS has been working with MIR3, the San Diego-based company that provides the product that sends out the notifications, to fix the technical problems with the system.
During the first test, 26,000 messages were sent out but only 20,000 were received, Callisto said.
‘That’s the reason you do the test, to find out if there are any problems,’ he said.
SU’s portion of the MIR3 system is managed by DPS. DPS officers are trained to use the system, in which they can send out a set of predetermined messages should a crisis occur on campus, from a shooting to a chemical spill, Morrow said.
After the test is conducted, MIR3 will analyze the data and tell the university how many people were contacted, by what means and how quickly. Information Technology and Services will determine the number of messages that are sent into the Syracuse University e-mail system.
Public Safety plans to test the system again during the summer and in the upcoming fall semester.
Published on April 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm
