By Aliya Sternstein, Technology Daily
© National Journal Group Inc.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg has cast an unflattering light on communications practices at college campuses but has also brought attention to disaster-response technologies that may thwart future tragedy.

	“For schools, historically they didn't have to worry about a terrorist attack ... but new threats are emerging every day.” — Liz Gasster, Cyber Security Industry Alliance

Many observers have questioned whether the second shooting attack in a classroom building might have been prevented with better information-sharing technology, allowing officials to implement a lockdown after the first attack across campus two hours earlier. Thirty-three people were killed in the mass shooting.

"[T]here's no place in our society that should have been more on top of real-time, location-based info-sharing about something of this sort than a college campus because of [its] high concentration of tech-savvy users -- let alone a technology one," said W. David Stephenson, a crisis management expert and principal at the homeland security firm Stephenson Strategies.

"[T]he stark reality is that the first incident should have resulted in an immediate lockdown, and the second round of shooting -- unless there's something that hasn't been reported yet -- should never have happened."

He pointed to the effectiveness of SquareLoop, a company that provides geographically targeted messaging services for distributing emergency alerts to mobile devices. In a sad irony, SquareLoop was scheduled to launch a campus edition of its security service next month, company officials said Tuesday. Instead, SquareLoop posted the offering on its Web site Monday night.

Joe Walsh, SquareLoop's chief operating officer, said the Virginia Tech event "highlights the need for schools, governments, corporations ... everybody to have a good continuity-of-operations plan built in."

His company's product geographically targets messages to ensure that emergency content only goes out to individuals in affected areas. "When people get so many messages that are irrelevant, they stop paying attention," Walsh said, referring to the effect as "alert fatigue."

To differentiate critical messages from the morass of text messages, e-mails and voice mails, SquareLoop's messages are accompanied by special alert tones and vibrating cadences.

Stephenson also said the university should have had a process in place for students to submit their camera photographs and digital videos to increase situational awareness. "The media, especially CNN, have been full of photos shot by students with their camera phones," he said.

Geographically targeted notification is a fairly new technology that businesses are still trying to understand and apply, said Liz Gasster, general counsel and acting executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. "Rather than saying Virginia Tech really failed, this is a good example of the types of technologies that schools should consider in the future," she said.

Increasingly, businesses are implementing a kind of 21st-century telephone tree that can quickly signal large numbers of people about emergencies via traditional and cellular phones and e-mail.

Gasster noted that on campuses, the system could be connected to a database containing home phone numbers, cell numbers and e-mail addresses of students and faculty. In the event of a disaster, officials could broadcast a voice recording with specific directions and simultaneously transmit the same message in e-mail text format.

"The problem for [reaching] students is that they don't carry BlackBerries ... but they do carry cell phones," she said. "For schools, historically they didn't have to worry about a terrorist attack ... but new threats are emerging every day."