Web Seminars Contributed by EDUCAUSE and Emergency Preparedness Plans

September is National Emergency Preparedness Month, an opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of emergency preparedness in homes, workplaces, colleges and universities, and communities. Institutions of higher education across the country are fine-tuning and test-driving their emergency preparedness plans, testing their emergency notification systems, and conducting awareness sessions for students, faculty, and staff. They are also exploring how they can better leverage information and communications technologies to help them address every phase of emergency management: prevention-mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The University of Maryland is taking a comprehensive approach to protecting its human, physical, and cyber assets and is exploring the use of social networking to enhance communication with stakeholders.

On April 16, 2007, a Virginia Tech student shot and killed 32 faculty and students and wounded 25 others before killing himself in an academic building on campus. The university is still dealing with the aftermath of the incident and expects it to be an ongoing concern for the foreseeable future. This session will encapsulate summaries of the IT-related lessons learned including the impact on the university's communication system; the notification issue; radio communications interoperability; the sheer logistics of accommodating the communications infrastructure and control center needs for a variety of emergency responders and law enforcement; identity management and privacy; and data preservation and computer forensics. Overriding all of these issues is the question of federal, state, and local policies and ways in which policy issues were encountered, confronted, and managed.

In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, colleges and universities across the country are reviewing their emergency preparedness plans and evaluating their ability to quickly notify constituents in crisis situations. Networked technologies (posting notices on Web sites, e-mailing information, and sending text messages to cell phones) are among the most promising solutions. As campuses explore options for their emergency communication plan, they must also consider infrastructure and policy and procedural components. This session will provide an overview of the strategies for emergency notifications of students, employees, and visitors, as well as a context and resources for campus emergency preparedness planning.