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Background:
The risks to the security of our infrastructure and to the safety of our people have increased dramatically over the past five years. Responsible public officials and business managers are expected today to provide effective responses to threats that were considered outside the realm of reasonable planning only a short time ago.
Fortunately, today’s wired – and increasingly wireless – world, provides opportunities for effective safety and security approaches that fit within today’s constrained operational and fiscal budgets. Solutions that were technologically and economically impractical only a few years ago are now becoming available for both commercial and governmental organizations at all levels.
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SEMS School Software
While there are many options available to assist organizations in responding to security and safety challenges, there are two critical characteristics that all organizations must address to ensure that their investments in these areas are both effective and cost-effective.
The first characteristic is software functionality. Traditionally, solutions in this area have implemented most of their functionality in special purpose, proprietary hardware. However, as systems have become more complex and as the threat environment has accelerated its rate of change, the ability of any closed, inflexible, system to continue to meet today’s challenges is becoming very limited. Providing both the responsiveness to a changing threat environment and the openness to incorporate new technologies and systems requires that the functional value of a solution be software-based and that the software continue to evolve to remain effective. This will not only protect the original investment in the solution, but eliminate the cost and disruption associated with replacement of solutions that have been made obsolete by changes in the threat environment or in the supported technology base.
The second characteristic is communication techniques. Once again, security and safety systems have historically been implemented with proprietary, dedicated communication protocols. For organizations with distributed resources (whether they are distributed around a campus, around a city, around the country or, literally, around the world) it is simply not practical to provide the necessary communications in a robust and cost-effective manner without taking full advantage of the capabilities of the Internet as well as local intranets and wireless communication meshes. While these new communication options can be utilized by safety and security systems, they are essentially different from the dedicated communication techniques of older systems and it requires basic changes in system design and implementation to use them effectively.
MAXXESS has designed and implemented a solution for enhancing the safety and security of organizations with distributed resources based upon these two critical characteristics. The solution, called SEMS [Safety and Emergency Management System], can be adapted to a wide range of environments, providing a critical backbone for implementing the state-of-the-art solutions that are required to meet the expectations being placed on organizations today for safety and security.
MAXXESS has introduced SEMS to meet the requirements of school and universities for enhanced emergency response and coordination capabilities. SEMS takes full advantage of existing network communications between multiple remote sites and a central management organization and provides the following advantages:
• Provides a standard security, safety and emergency response system.
• Provides situational awareness for all remote sites.
• Provides a timely, uniform response to all emergencies.
• Ensures security and safety standards for all facilities.
• Provides automatic remote notification of events – does not have to be monitored.
• Can be used to model and test response scenarios.
• Can integrate to the police and fire departments as well as other support groups.
• Provides DHS alert level as well as news and weather for context.
• Provides two-way electronic communication for all remote sites.
SEMS leverages existing personnel and resources to enhance the organization’s ability to respond effectively to emergency situations by providing to the school or university the information needed from all remote sites to assess their status and providing to all sites consistent information and guidance from the central organization. SEMS uses standard PC-class hardware and uses existing networks for all necessary communication. SEMS can be extended from the organizational level to the local or regional levels as appropriate.
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Conclusion:
The MAXXESS framework solution that is targeted to provide visibility and communications between public school districts and their schools is called SEMS, or Safety and Emergency Management System. It provides consistent and timely information to all elements of the school system in response to unplanned or emergency events, and provides a security framework for school districts and their schools using existing networks.
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