Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Is an emerging technology known as “geofencing” the future of emergency alerts? If so, the future is now in six northern Utah counties that have adopted a system that can pinpoint the best areas to send urgent notifications to smartphone users.
Davis, Weber, Cache, Box Elder, Morgan and Rich counties have teamed with New Hampshire-based mobile communications firm Ping4 Inc. to send the focused alerts for anything from missing children cases to suspect searches and standoffs.
“If we were to have a barricade or a hostage situation, we can actually take this application and create a mile radius around it letting the public know what’s going on in that situation,” Davis County Emergency Services Coordinator Ellis Bruch said. “One of the best ways to keep the public out is to keep them informed.”
Conversely, Bruch said police can exclude a particular address inside the targeted area.
“If we had a guy standing in the middle of this and I didn’t want him to get the information, I could draw it around that, excluding that little area, and that area will be blocked,” Bruch said.
Bruch said he believed the system would prove more effective than landline-based “reverse 911 systems,” though smartphone users must download the free ping4alerts! app from the iOS or Android app stores.
Alerts can currently be sent to enabled cellphones using the federal Integrated Public Alert & Warning System and Wireless Emergency Alerts, but Bruch said that often requires federal approval, whereas the Ping4 app is locally controlled and more narrowly focused.
For public safety to really capture the public's attention, they have to do it in a precise manner or they're going to lose their audience.
–Norm Archer, Ping4 Vice President of Marketing
Ping4 Vice President of Marketing Norm Archer also said he believes the app is a better option in many circumstances than other platforms that utilize broad-based alerts.
“You’re going to turn off your audience really quickly with what they call in that industry the ‘cry wolf’ syndrome – you know, alerts that go out that really aren’t accurate or pertinent,” Archer said.
Archer referenced a recent Amber Alert that utilized the federal Wireless Emergency Alerts system to reach people in Southern California, but also reached cellphone users in Seattle.
“For public safety to really capture the public’s attention, they have to do it in a precise manner or they’re going to lose their audience,” he said.
Archer said the company has had a commercialized product for a year and a half, and it quickly spread to police agencies in the northeast. The manhunt in Watertown, Mass., following the Boston Marathon bombing utilized Ping4’s technology, he said.
Additional counties have signed on in California, Colorado and elsewhere, Archer said, and Florida emergency officials have entered into a pilot program with the company where people on beaches could receive coastal warnings.
The Utah Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management is also aiming to implement an enhanced emergency alert system by summer, spokesman Joe Dougherty said.
He said the division is currently in the process of finding a vendor for the system.
There are similar technologies geared toward more effectively targeting cellphone users, Dougherty said, including CodeRED and Nixle.
Dougherty also pointed out the down side to much of the existing emergency notification technology — that it doesn’t reach cellphones unless they’re registered.
He said the geofence technology could be especially useful at the state level in the event of earthquakes.
“It’s something we think is really important,” Dougherty said.
