Greater Sudbury is preparing to roll out its new mass public emergency system, known as Sudbury Alerts.
The city bought the Everbridge system through a funding agreement with Vale and plans to implement it at the end of March. It makes uses of a number of platforms – email, desktop alerts, text messages, etc. – to alert Sudburians in case there's an incident that presents a threat to public safety.
“Sudbury Alerts will be implemented in two phases,” says a staff report on the plan headed to the emergency services committee Feb. 6. “In the first phase, the city will launch the mass notification component of the system to the public and in phase two employee contact information will upload into the system to support a corporate business continuity program.
“The target audience is any resident of Greater Sudbury who has a home phone number, a cellular phone number, and/or an email address.”
The report says there are 55,000 public names and landline telephone numbers in the public domain, with contact information for residents and businesses added by uploading the local White and Yellow Pages data. Everbridge produced this video to explain how their system works.
Residents or businesses who don't want to get notifications will have the option to opt out. And anyone whose contact information isn't listed in the White and Yellow Pages will have to register on the city's website.
“Residents may add additional contact methods and addresses (e.g. home, work, relative’s home), specify which geographical areas within the city they wish to be notified about or update contact information at any time through their own user portal,” the report says.
Staff will receive training on the Sudbury Alerts system this month and next. White and Yellow pages information will be upload in February, as well, while a communications campaign encouraging residents to sign up will take place in March and April.
A test of the system will take place in May, during Emergency Preparedness Week, with the system up and running sometime after that.
