In contrast, for emergency content messaging, we want the ability to put a player into a different grouping than it has when it is playing day-to-day content.  Why?  Because being able to define different player groupings for emergencies, allows us to manage, or switch, emergency messaging quicker and more precisely by geolocation.  So, players may be showing content that is not geographically relevant, whereas an emergency is normally specifically targeted for a geographic location.  Let’s look at some examples.

Five Department Groups

First, let’s consider a building which has multiple floors with different departments on the floors.  Each department has their own digital signage content.  Some content may be common to all departments, but it may also contain content specific for anyone who is part of a department.  All the digital signs are part of a single platform, but each department is managing its own content and has players on its floor(s) all part of its department grouping.

In this picture, we have two buildings with 5 different departments, called red, green, white, yellow, and orange.  Each of the departments has its own content playing on screens, and the players throughout the buildings are grouped according to the department color.  For emergencies, we would want to also group the players by the building they are in and maybe even the floor they are on. emergency management digital signage.

Can we put different emergency messages on different screens in an emergency? 

Fire in the small building

If someone pulls the fire alarm in the small building, we want the displays in the small building to immediately start playing the content for a fire.  The content might include instructions on what to do and where to proceed.  Let’s say there are 3 departments in the small building: red, green, and white.

All the players in the small building should have the same emergency building grouping.  When the fire alarm is pulled, all the players assigned to the small building’s emergency grouping will change to the fire emergency content.

However, the green, red, and white department players in the large building will continue to play their departmental content.  No fire alarm is triggered.  This scenario is shown in the top-left part of the image below, where the purple color represents emergency content.

But, the security office may want to send a message to the occupants in the large building, letting them know there is a fire in the smaller building and they should stay away.  One way to do that is to send instructions to all the players/screens in the large building.  Then all 5 departments will have their departmental content overridden in both buildings. As a result, we see in the bottom-left part of the image below where there are two different emergency messages, purple and gray.

Severe Weather Warning

If there was a tornado, hurricane, or other imminent severe weather then the security department pushes a message to both buildings. The message replaces the departmental content immediately, communicating to both buildings.  This is shown in the bottom-right part of the image above, with the purple emergency content going to both buildings.

Emergency Messaging by Floor

Moreover, in a large office tower like the larger building above, the security office is able to target the messaging on the displays by floor.  For instance, they either send different emergency messages, like the image in the bottom-right picture above.  Or, they simply send the purple or gray message to the target floors and let the regular content play on the other floors.

The examples above easily scale to a larger campus.  Higher education campuses with over 100 buildings, large corporate, government or real estate company campuses, and even geographically diverse locations.  With more buildings or locations, we want the ability to group the buildings by Zone.   We then switch content by zone instead of by one building at a time or switch the content in all zones instantly.

Shooter on Campus

Unfortunately, this type of emergency occurs too frequently at our educational institutes.  In this type of emergency, allowing the security office to control the emergency messaging on the screens as needed is critical.  This type of ad-hoc switching is described above.

On a large campus different messaging is required for the dynamics of the situation.  For example, a “shelter in place “for the building with the shooter. On the other hand, for the other buildings on campus, the messaging is to “stay away from the building”, with the shooter.  Above all, as in any emergency, time is critical.  In short, getting the messages up on screens in seconds versus minutes can save lives.

If the digital display platform has been integrated with the security camera system, it is possible for the security team in the control center to assist the onsite response team by putting camera feeds on display screens in the locations where onsite responders are stationed.  This may or may not assist the onsite responders, but the possibility is important because it could be used in other scenarios.

Can mass notification systems be integrated into the digital display platform? Which ones? How are they integrated and used?

There are a number of mass notification services, e.g. Omnilert, CAPP, or FEMA. They are especially popular when the email and or mobile number of the regular or frequent occupants of a campus or facility are known.  For example, the student body, faculty, or office employees’ data is available.  However, if one of these services is used, integrating the service with the digital displays on site makes sense. It is particularly practical for a number of reasons pointed out in this blog.

A good digital display platform will allow for either switched content or on-top content integration.  This blog talks about switched content capabilities.  For a description of on-top content, and how it can be used for CMS emergency messaging, please see this other blog.

Finally, integration with a Mass notification system like Omnilert can work with either switched or on-top messaging.  For switched emergency messaging, when an alert is received from Omnilert, the content on the displays is switched instantly to the Omnilert message system-wide.  The same integrations to CAPP or FEMA can be programmed to play on-demand when an alert is sent. Omnilert provides an RSS based API that feeds an alert to the CMS platform.  The Omnilert feed then triggers the automatic switching to emergency messaging on the digital displays.

What else can be done to make the emergency messaging more robust on a digital display platform?

There are always new ideas which will enhance the capabilities of an emergency messaging system. And, some things will make the emergency management messaging system more robust from an IT point-of-view.  Here are some quick ideas for both.

More Robust IT Environment: Emergency Management Digital Signage

• First, install the digital display server platform locally to take away the dependency on an internet connection for the messaging to work.
• Secondly, have a mobile internet back-up for your internet connection, e.g. Carriers are offering an LTE back-up, business service for $99/mth.

New Capabilities: Emergency Management Digital Signage

• Put up QR codes on Emergency messaging allowing an occupant to scan the code to indicate where they are in the building. This enables the occupant to be tracked; have directions sent to their mobile; enable a live connection, or automatically triggers video instructions.
• Alternately, display a number to call or text if you are trapped in a building. This allows security to maintain a dialogue with you via text
• Further, combining switched emergency messaging with on-top emergency messaging opens up new scenarios
• And, allowing different groups to have responsibility for messaging on different portions of the screen
• Finally, incorporating audio files into the emergency messaging to play on the speakers of the display. This may also require the capability to centrally turn the sound on for all screens in a display network. Emergency management digital signage.

Extend and Integrate

• Extend the emergency messaging for the digital displays to the desktops of all the workers in the buildings. This enables emergency content to immediately play at the desktop.  And, this can be done simply with a general URL available to anyone. But, it is more effective if the message can be pushed to a user’s desktop.
• Secondly, extend the emergency messaging to in-room displays. As a result, anyone in a meeting room or a classroom will also get the emergency messaging instantly.  This will work today with some platforms, provided the in-room hardware can support a simple URL content stream.
• Finally, integrate the digital display platform with more building subsystems. Connecting these sub-systems is a real step to a connected Internet of Things (IoT) implementation.  Consequently, the displays will show updates of data or the status of these sub-systems in real-time.  For example, the fire alarm system described above, each emergency content stream has its own URL.  The URL is triggered by the other sub-system, which it is attached to. Emergency management digital signage.

Let’s summarize our discussion.

Summary

A digital media communications platform that is capable of supporting any kind of onsite emergency has the following capabilities:

1) The CMS:

A single CMS, which supports digital signs, video walls, in-room digital signs and room panels outside rooms. As a result, all of the displays are part of the emergency messaging system.  To sum up, the CMS requires these functions for emergency messaging:

1. First, a robust set of widgets to support any content type emergency management digital signage
2. Secondly, the ability to support On-Top emergency messaging emergency management digital signage
3. Further, native support for sound files coupled with platforms ability to turn sound on/off across all displays
4. And finally, the ability to extend the emergency messaging to desktops emergency management digital signage

2) Emergency Content:

Emergency content should be classified and managed differently from regular content. The emergency content is tagged in different ways to allow automated switching. Additionally, emergency content is administratively separated from regular content to keep it protected from regular users. Further, the platform should allow the creation of an unlimited number of pre-planned emergency content messages, for any type of emergency. And, the content messaging for emergencies is supported by a full-function CMS. Moreover, it is the same CMS used to create regular content, but is separately managed.

3) Time to Switch Content:

Most importantly, it supports instant and automated switching of regular content for any number of emergency content messages. In short, instant means greater safety, which can save lives.

4) Emergency Player Grouping:

In addition, the content switching of regular groups, or departments of screens, allows a high degree of flexibility.  So, targeting of different emergency messaging groupings is possible. And, player management allows an emergency grouping, which is distinctly different from the regular player group.  Similarly, emergency grouping flexibility by floor, building, and zone is possible.

5) Manage the Emergency:

A separate Emergency management module is part of the platform. So the building or campus security department has exclusive access to emergency messaging if needed.  In other words, they will switch emergency content messages as the situation dictates (ad-hoc). Ideally, this would include an emergency dashboard of some kind to make it easier to manage the emergency.   Finally, special user access levels for the department users who would manage the emergency management module.

6) Connectivity to other Building Sub-Systems (IoT):

The ability to integrate into other building infrastructure is not yet mandatory, but it will be.  For example, the fire alarm system, the security camera system, motion sensors, or any of the many other IoT sub-systems which are part of a build’s infrastructure. Importantly, these integrations support automated content switching, triggered by an event on one of these sub-systems.

Building and Campus Policies and Guidelines for Digital Signs

To provide everything discussed in this blog requires a digital display technology platform, not just a CMS.  The platform will need a robust, feature-rich CMS, having separate functional capabilities that enable instant switching, desktop messaging, or screen volume control.

Display5’s platform has many of these capabilities and we continue to enhance and advance it as new requirements surface.

The next blog talks about the kind of emergency messaging that a robust CMS on its own can be capable of, using On-top messaging. Emergency management digital signage.