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Emergency test results: 5-minute reach rises

ens0alertus-screenResults of Miami University’s emergency notification system (ENS) test from Thursday, Feb. 1, show nearly 73 percent of Miami students, faculty and staff received a test message within five minutes.

That’s up from 69 and 70 percent in the last two tests. An addition to the modes of message sending, a computer monitor alert, was seen by almost 16 percent of survey respondents as their first method of alert.

Representatives of the Institutional Response Team (IRT) sent test messages at 1:20 p.m. via the following methods using the e2Campus program:

  • Email and text message alerts.
  • Informacast, the voice- and display-based feature for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephones and blue light emergency phone towers (Oxford campus).
  • The Four Winds Interactive digital signage system.
  • Miami Cable Television System.
  • Miami University Oxford, Regionals, myMiami and police services websites.
  • A Twitter alert on the university account.
  • Computer monitor alerts via Alertus software.

About 38 percent of recipients responded to a survey sent to a random list of 10,000 staff, faculty and students on all local campuses.

ens-first-mode-graph

Percentages of survey respondents who received their first test messages via various means.

Thirty-seven percent received an email as their first notice; 31.3 percent received a text as their first notice. Just over 9 percent first received a notice via VoIP telephone alert.

About 91 percent of survey responders reported to have received an e-mail alert. Among the remaining 9 percent who did not receive an e-mail alert, some reported that they had not checked their junk mail filter or that they were not near a computer at the time of the test. Sixty percent received a text alert, up from 54 percent last fall.

Of the 13,187 text messages sent to subscribers, 96.6 percent were verified as delivered. Some survey respondents were not in areas with good cell reception. Others may not have had phones turned on during the test.

The IRT thanks survey respondents who provided comments. Feedback contributes to understanding and improving our emergency notification system.

Several commenters noted a lack of audio from VoIP phones in classrooms or residence halls. Because of the phones’ use in emergency messaging, it is important that the volume on them is not turned all the way down.