Ivy League school performs campus-wide mass notification system test

University of Pennsylvania successfully conducts a campus-wide mass notification system test in less than 10 minutes.

By Source: Reuters November 4, 2009

According to Reuters , the University of Pennsylvania and its Division of Public Safety successfully performed a campus-wide mass notification system test in less than eight minutes. Designed by MIR3 Inc ., the UPennAlertEmergency Notification System sent more than 74,000 SMS text messages and more than 53,000 email notifications in under seven-and-half minutes to all students, faculty, and staff. In the event of a real-time emergency, parents of students would be added to the notification list.

The UPennAlert system was created in 2007 as a result of the tragic events on the Virginia Tech campus in April of that year. Since that time, MIR3’s platform has been deployed in over 100 major universities and colleges in the United States.

"We appreciate the University of Pennsylvania putting our notification and
response technology through such an extensive and large-scale drill, in
addition to the ongoing, smaller-scale test notifications they send weekly,"
said MIR3 CEO Amir Moussavian. "Our team has worked very closely with the
University’s Division of Public Safety over the past two years to make sure the MIR3 platform works the way they need it to, each and every time they use it."