Information about the process and methods used to communicate to the campus audience and beyond during a crisis or emergency.

1. Get the word out
Communicating to the campus during an emergency

2. Brett Pollak
@brettcpollak
@campusweboffice
#uccsc2012

3. Agenda
Overview of emergency reporting structure
Classifications of emergencies
Communication mechanisms
Recent case study
Improvements needed
Open discussion

5. What we plan for…

6. What it ends up being…

7. Plan for likely scenarios
Basis for response based in Incident
Command System (ICS)
• Creates a synthetic organization in the
time of crisis

8. Incident
Commander
Information
Liaison Officer
Officer
Safety Officer
Finance &
Operations Planning Logistics
Administration

9. Emergency Operations Center

10. Emergency Types
Severity 1 (low)
Severity 2 (medium)
Severity 3 (high)

11. Severity 1 (low)
Examples:
• H1N1 Swine Flu,
• Severe storms predicted or possible flooding
Communications may contain info for
“preventative measures”

12. Severity 1 (low)
Communication

13. Severity 1 (low)

14. Severity 1 (low)

15. Severity 1 (low)

16. Register for notifications

17. Register for notifications

18. Register for notifications

19. Other Communication Channels
Channel 1610 (888) 308-8273

20. Severity 2 (medium)
Examples:
• Large magnitude earthquake
• Fire approaching campus, etc.
Some damage or affect to the campus (classes
closed) may be immediately evident or likely to be
evident in the near future

21. Severity 2 (medium)

22. Severity 2 (medium/high)

23. Severity 2 (medium/high)

24. Severity 2 (medium/high)

25. Severity 2 (medium/high)

27. Code to get banner
<script src=
"http://ucsd.edu/common/_emergency‐
broadcast/message.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
DRAFT

28. Severity 3 (high)
Examples:
• Active on-campus shooter
• Large scale on-campus fire, or other high
impact incident
Could potentially capture the attention of a
state-wide, national, or international audience.

29. Severity 3 (high) Treatment
UCSD home page becomes the emergency
status page
– Ensures viewers do not miss info updates
– Lightweight: optimized to handle increased
Web traffic
– ucsd.edu/emergency would point here

30. Redundancy
Examples:
• Power Failures in datacenter
• Fire or earthquake disables datacenter
Backup generator
Can run for ~4 hours before refueling

31. Disaster Recovery
Copy of CMS content & websites
sent to UCOP each morning at
5:00 AM
Limited number of accounts
created (CMS not behind SSO)
Utility created to switch DNS so
content under ucsd.edu is being
delivered from UCOP Web server
environment.

32. Case study
Sept. 8, 2011
• Power outage across Southern CA
• Power outage duration: ~20 hours
Summary
• Generators kicked in
– No downtime
• Cell towers became overloaded
– Communication issues
• Batteries needed to be charged via car chargers
• Concerns about family safety balanced with campus safety

33. What we can do better
Utilize social media
Rock solid back channel for Communications
Utilizing crowdsourcing to report status
Better ‘local’ communication channels