Army aims to protect personnel with alert system expansion

The Army has expanded its emergency notification system for the First Infantry Division and Fort Riley in Kansas, doubling the number of protected personnel at the fort to 10,000.

The expansion includes the First Infantry Division and Irwin Army hospital, as well as the Fort Riley elementary schools on the base. It expands the notification system to include the base’s tenant units, enabling each tenant to alert or recall its active duty and civilian workforce and provide information in an emergency.

The alerting system includes pop-up visual and audio alerts via computer, SMS text messages to cell phones and e-mail messages to computers, PDAs and other handheld mobile devices. It also allows the First Infantry and Fort Riley to create tiered operator permissions, enabling operators to alert all personnel on base; each tenant unit will also have its own private system that it can use to send alerts exclusively to its members.

The system is an expansion of AtHoc IWSAlerts enterprisewide, from the Standard Edition to the Enterprise Edition. Other agencies using the technology include the Air Force, the Navy, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.