The same system officials in Los Angeles are using to share critical data in real time is about to roll out in St. Albert, just north of Edmonton.
On Jan. 21 city council took part in a workshop orientating them to the features of the new Everbridge emergency management notification system.
The system has been in testing for a “couple of months” and should go live in March, according to Mark Pickford, the city’s emergency management manager. It addresses a “problematic” gap in the city corporation’s capacity to send targeted alerts to staff in a critical situations such as an extreme weather event or a mass casualty shooting, as was played out in a mock attack at the Jack Kraft recycling depot in December.
Everbridge is for connecting city employees internally; it does not replace the Alberta Emergency Alert system for the general public.
The United States-based company also provides such systems to Strathcona County, Lamont County, and the City of Red Deer, as well as Florida’s state-wide alert system, and counts Virginia’s Loudon and Fairfax counties, Siemens, Nokia and Microsoft among its 6,500 clients around the world.
Pickford described the system as a base model “Ikea” setup that can be scaled and customized to St. Albert’s needs. One such feature is a tie-in to extreme weather warnings from Environment Canada, such as a tornado watch, which flow through the system to the appropriate recipients without a human having to approve them.
“We customised it so that we're getting the critical stuff out immediately and the other stuff, you know, we can kind of throttle back because it's not as significant as an ice storm or a tornado,” he said.
The system is expected to cost $100,000 over five years, according to a city document.
