UT Austin: Proof Positive That Training, Relationships and Technology Pay Off

Multiple Modes of Mass Notification Keep Campus Informed
Communicating to the general campus population was also critical during the Sept. 28 incident. On that day, SMS text alerts, E-mail, sirens, loudspeakers, TV announcements, 1-800 numbers, Web site postings, pagers and computer pop-ups were all used to tell students, faculty and staff they should lockdown and barricade themselves if they were on campus.

The first text alert was sent only minutes after the initial 911 call was received by UTPD. In total, five text alerts were sent to 54,000 people for a total of more than 250,000 messages (see timeline on below).
Although UT Austin officials were generally pleased with the performance of the SMS text alert system, according to Cronk, one cell carrier had some challenges.

Read UT Austin’s Mass Notification Policy

“We got our messages through to our system in four or five minutes,” he says. “From there they go to a third party master site, and from there they transmit to the individual carrier towers. Those towers can handle different capacities, depending on what’s going on. One carrier we found saw a large num
ber of messages coming at them, and they considered it spam and blocked a few. To correct that, we had our IT department contact the carrier and provide them with a short code that heads every one of our messages. Now when we send an emergency message, that tower will open up.

“I think you are going to see some white papers and legislation on this come out at some point. They have to let those emergency messages go through.”

Spike in Network Traffic Not a Problem for University
In addition to some cell carrier issues, which are experienced by many campuses during active shooter incidents, IT bandwidth can be challenging because so many individuals are trying to communicate about the incidents via the campus network. Not surprisingly, UT Austin experienced a significant spike in network usage during the Sept. 28 event.

“We had higher bandwidth use during this event than we did for President Obama’s speech here or the World Cup,” says Harkins.

UT Austin’s IT department, however, was able to effectively manage the increase in traffic by running a program script normally used during finals, explains Cronk.

“They run it right before finals to open up the bandwidth,” he says. “[On Sept. 28], the IT department was monitoring the situation from the beginning, and when they saw the bandwidth starting to dip, they went ahead and ran the same program script that they ran for finals. After that, bandwidth opened right up, and there was no slowing.”

In fact, UT Austin’s bandwidth was so robust that the university did not need to water down its Web site – a tactic sometimes used by other universities during active shooter incidents and other emergencies.

Despite the lack of bandwidth problems, emergency E-mails that were sent during the incident took some time to reach their intended recipients.

“When we send out 70,000 E-mails, it can take 40-45 minutes [for them to be received], even on a priority if there are a lot of other things going on in the system at the same time,” says Harkins. “We use it, but all of these systems have plusses and minuses. You have to use as many as you can.”

One of those other mass notification options included social media (Twitter and Facebook), which can communicate not only with students, faculty and staff but also the press.

“Get your arms around the social media component,” advises Harkins. “UTPD’s Facebook account went from 475 friends at 8 a.m. on Sept. 28 to 10,000 friends on the morning of the 29th and 14,000 the following day.”

Provide the Press With the Information They Need
Several best practices were implemented so the school could effectively work with journalists and control rumors, which can cause confusion and sometimes even endanger the public. A joint information center with electrical power, parking and support for TV trucks was set up so university and law enforcement officials could hold press conferences. Harkins notes that the location and handling of the press conferences were also part of the August tabletop exercise.

“During the excitement of the event, you don’t have time to say, ‘Where can we have a press conference?’” he claims. “We already drilled that and were comfortable with that.

“The hardest thing is the flow of information. I was in Vietnam, and when you are being shot at, the last thing you want to do is radio your boss and tell him or her what’s going on. But your boss needs to know, and the public affairs machine needs to get fed. Make sure you get them as much information as possible.”

Cronk adds that the media must be told where they should go to get information. “At UT, we have three different corners of the campus where we have joint information centers,” he says. “When a press conference is going to be held, a notice goes to the media to go to a specific location.”

See How UT Austin Communicates with Parents About Incidents

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