How BlackBerry AtHoc Provides Mississippi Emergency Management Agency their Cornerstone for Critical Information Notifications

A powerful crisis collaboration and communications tool, AtHoc is trusted by public safety organizations and the majority of United States government agencies to protect personnel and infrastructure during emergencies. With the capacity to send alerts through virtually any channel, AtHoc streamlines emergency collaboration through features like pre-configured templates and geolocation targeting. It also integrates with a range of different devices, systems, and platforms, including IPAWS.

Shortly after MEMA began the process of implementing AtHoc, the platform was ready for active use. This process included installation, building templates, and training administrators and operators. Throughout, BlackBerry played an active role, providing advice on both implementation and workflows. 

The agency carried out its first full-scale Grand Gulf drill in February 2017, with its next drill scheduled for March 2019.

“If something goes down in Grand Gulf, it represents a full activation,” explains Brewer. “Name any state agency you can think of, and they’ll have a role in it. Having prepopulated templates definitely made the drill move more quickly, as did the ability to contact people through avenues other than email and text.”

In working with AtHoc’s deployment experts, MEMA created a total of 64 AtHoc templates. In addition to templates specifically related to Grand Gulf, it also has templates for a diverse range of events and incidents. These range from minor weather events to hazardous materials to natural disasters.

“Mississippi is impacted every year by numerous tropical and severe weather events, including life-threatening hurricanes and tornadoes,” says Brewer. “We now use AtHoc in conjunction with WebEOC software to manage events and disasters; we also share post-event damage reports with stakeholders via AtHoc for situational awareness.”

There are 150 MEMA employees on the AtHoc platform, 50 of whom have publishing rights for alerts. Overall, there are more than 2,000 users active on MEMA’s AtHoc deployment, employed at state and emergency agencies across Mississippi. Most notably, the state’s Search and Rescue task force is using AtHoc’s alerting and response verification functionality to better coordinate their search efforts. AtHoc achieves this in three ways: through secure, industry leading infrastructure, through the capacity to send alerts using different mediums, and through detailed notification reporting.

“The Office of Response has a seat at the table as far as coordination goes, and we’re responsible for sending out alerts to our stakeholders and emergency coordinating officials who respond if an event does occur,” explains Brewer. “Multiple events happen daily all across the state, the majority being hazardous materials and weather warnings. In 2017, we sent out 2,406 notifications total, 505 of which were hazardous materials warnings.” 

Rapid Response: MEMA’s Office of Response is run by a relatively small number of workers. For each twenty-four-hour period, there are ten staff on rotation. It’s thus essential that they be able to send out alerts quickly, without having to spend a great deal of time manually editing each message.  

AtHoc’s templates enable them to do exactly that, and AtHoc itself allows them to also track which recipients have received alerts and are able to respond.

“At the end of October, we had a severe weather outbreak,” recalls Scott Davis, Communications Bureau Director at MEMA. “It was just myself and two others in the operations center at the time. After being notified by the National Weather Service, we were able to issue 77 severe weather warnings to agencies across the state within probably two hours or so.” 

Coordination & Collaboration: Time is especially critical in the early stages of an impending emergency, and disasters do not operate on a nine-to-five schedule. An agent may not always be within reach of their desk or near an operations center when an event occurs. With AtHoc, they don’t need to be.

“Our organization and the agencies we work with have multiple people in the field, all equipped with the mobile app,” explains Brewer. “The ability to send out an alert wherever and whenever an incident happens is literally in the palm of their hands. They don’t need to drive to an operations center or travel to the office; they can notify us immediately.”

Redundant & Reliable: A communications breakdown is one of the worst things that can happen in an emergency situation. MEMA needed a crisis communications platform able to guarantee delivery. AtHoc achieves this in two ways: through secure, industry-leading redundant infrastructure, and through the capacity to send alerts using different mediums and providing detailed notification reporting.