Title
Receive a report from Office of Emergency Services on the status of the Alert Monterey Emergency Notification System and the community outreach efforts to date.
Report
RECOMMENDATION:
It is recommended that the Board of Supervisors receive a report from Office of Emergency Services on the status of the Alert Monterey Emergency Notification System and the community outreach efforts to date.
SUMMARY:
This report describes the activities by the Office of Emergency Services and Emergency Communications Department to increase the capacity of our new emergency alerting platform Everbridge to better inform residents of emergency situations. The new web based system allows citizens to receive notifications on their cell phones, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone system, and email and text messages. Community outreach including a countywide test of the alerting system for opt-in residents has generated moderate growth in registered residents. An aggressive community outreach program is underway to improve the capacity to reach all of our residents.
DISCUSSION:
In October 2013, the County and Emergency Communications Department transitioned to a new emergency notification system with our current vendor, Everbridge. Our relationship with Everbridge brought much more capacity to inform residents of emergency situations, allowing people to receive notifications on their cell phones, through email and text message, and on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems. The new system also allowed for residents to select multiple areas throughout the county to "subscribe" to, receiving any and all messages that are launched that concern any of their areas of interest. These new features expanded on the old models of alerting and allowed people to be more proactive and in control of what information that they receive. We imported 4,421 contacts to our resident opt-in database. These numbers had previously been registered with 21st Century Co...
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