Benefits of streamlined, two-way notification during year-long pilot in the City of Miami lead to expansion of the MIR3 technology
San Diego --[EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION NEWS]-- February 22, 2006 – MIR3™, the technology leader in Intelligent Notification™ solutions, has received a contract from the Miami Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) to provide expanded Intelligent Notification services in the Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe. Miami UASI was formed to distribute Homeland Security funds across South Florida. At its discretion, it can disburse funds to other municipalities that would likely be called in an emergency.
The multi-modal MIR3 Intelligent Notification solution was chosen for high-speed emergency communications in these four areas after a highly successful "pilot" of the technology in the City of Miami. During 2004 to 2005, the City of Miami used the MIR3 Intelligent Notification platform an average of once a month to speed the process of notifying and mobilizing first responders and other key individuals during disasters that pose a threat to human lives and critical business and government operations.
"We have had amazing results with the MIR3 Intelligent Notification platform," said Joe Fernandez, the Miami UASI's administrator and the City of Miami's assistant fire chief. "We signed the contract on a Thursday, trained staff at the City of Miami on a Friday, and by Saturday, we were launching notifications to all emergency personnel in preparation for Hurricane Ivan’s landfall in 2004. We also used the MIR3 system this past hurricane season, during Katrina and Wilma."
The MIR3 Intelligent Notification platform facilitates the rapid delivery and response of emergency communications to and from any device, such as landline, satellite and mobile phones, email, pagers, SMS, PDAs and fax. Once profiles of individual recipients or groups are set up, communications can be sent with a click of a mouse. Seconds later they are received on each individual's preferred device. If the preferred device does not answer, the message is automatically sent to the next device in the person's profile, with speech-to-text translation automatically performed if needed. This process repeats itself using high-speed communication protocols until a response is received. In all, tens of thousands of messages can be sent and responded to in a matter of minutes using the MIR3 technology.
"In the heat of an emergency, whether it's a computer crash, a flood, a bomb threat in an office building or a major freeway accident, even well-trained individuals do not always think clearly," said David Leibow, executive vice president at MIR3. "Add to that the time-consuming and unreliable nature of contacting individuals manually or by only a single method, and it's evident that a system such as the MIR3 Intelligent Notification platform cuts overall response time by hours, possibly even days."
The rollout to the four counties will begin next month under the supervision of the City of Miami, which will provide "Best Practices" guidance and training to those county agencies that need the new technology the most.
Four Florida Counties Launch MIR3 Intelligent Notification Platform for Emergency Operations and Business Continuity
