Emergency Notification System Expanded At Air Force Bases

  • Sep 12, 2008
AtHoc Inc. recently announced that the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) has expanded its use of AtHoc IWSAlerts within the command. AFMC awarded a contract for AtHoc software licenses and services, and the emergency notification system is now deployed to an additional 25,000 people.

The contract was awarded through Harris IT Services, a business unit of Harris Corp.

This deployment expands AFMC’s use of AtHoc IWSAlerts at Eglin Air Force Base, increasing the number of personnel alerted through the system from 5,000 to 15,000. AFMC is also using the same centralized instance of AtHoc IWSAlerts to alert up to 15,000 personnel at the command’s headquarters at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

AtHoc IWSAlerts has been deployed centrally at Eglin and will support the emergency needs of all AFMC personnel at Eglin as well as headquarters staff and personnel at Wright Patterson. In this single instance, multi-tenant model, emergency operators at each Air Force base command post can log into the system through a secure, password-protected Web browser to alert personnel on their individual base or at command headquarters, either on base or off-site.

“As one of the largest of the Air Force major commands, AFMC is a highly distributed organization with significant emergency notification requirements,” said Col. Richard Wesche, deputy director of communications for Headquarters AFMC. “Having a centralized system in place that can serve the needs of the individual command posts up to the base level and beyond has numerous benefits, including cost savings, reduced maintenance and improved emergency communication within and between facilities.”

“AtHoc has already proved its value through existing deployments at Eglin and Edwards Air Force bases, and it has the capability to scale to the needs of the largest commands. In addition to the scalability and centralized enterprise management capabilities, unified alerting across multiple channels including desktop alerting, telephony and Giant Voice were of key importance,” said John Heller, vice president, DoD Operations, Harris IT Services.

With its network-centric approach, AtHoc IWSAlerts manages the entire alerting process to all delivery media using a single management application. Emergency alerts appear on PCs as intrusive audio/visual desktop notifications and they are also delivered to landline and mobile telephones. Alerts are delivered within an average of two minutes. With its enterprise-class capabilities, AtHoc IWSAlerts provides a Web-based management system that controls all capabilities across the underlying delivery systems from notification, scenarios, permissions, user contact information and alert tracking. It also provides a feedback capability that allows the command to see who has acknowledged receipt of the alert and their status.

“AFMC supports more than 6,400 aircraft and 29,500 engines. Keeping the command operational and personnel protected is critical for ongoing Air Force missions,” said Andy Anderson, vice president of defense sector operations for AtHoc. “By providing personnel with immediate information about emergency situations and potential danger, AFMC can protect their personnel while also affecting an optimal response to the situation at hand.”

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