Emergency notification system


An emergency notification system is a method of facilitating the one-way dissemination or broadcast of messages to one or many groups of people, alerting them to a pending or existing emergency. The Emergency Notification System was created by Dialogic Communication Corporation in the early 1980s. DCC is now owned by Motorola Solutions who purchased them as part of their 2018 acquisition of Airbus DS Communications. The acquisition included the ENS patent portfolio.

Notification vs. communication

Emergency notification systems constitute a subset of the types of systems described by the broader term emergency communication systems which includes systems that provide one-way and two-way communications, between emergency communications staff, first responders, and impacted individuals. Mass automated dialing services such as Reverse 9-1-1, and the common town siren systems that are used to alert for tornadoes, tsunami, air-raid, etc., are examples of emergency notification systems.
Many local governments and organizations that hold large, public events are adopting emergency notification systems in order to notify large groups of people in the event of an emergency. For example, in 2013, the very popular Dallas YMCA "Turkey Trot" added a new alert system called RedFlag to the race that 40,000+ people participate in on Thanksgiving.
Most major telecommunications providers offer Public Safety Answering Points access to their subscriber data in order to facilitate the effective use of one-way emergency notifications

One-click notification

One click notification is a method of clicking one button within a mobile app or emergency notification platform to initiate the dissemination of a message. An emergency notification system is an example of one-click multimodal notification. Organizations use a one-click notification service to trigger the sending of messages via pre-saved configurations such as selected contact groups, chosen delivery methods etc.