Integrated Safety, Security, and Crisis Management Technology: A purchaser’s guide for educational institutions

The education sector faces escalating safety and security threats

In recent years, the number of safety and security challenges has only increased for educational institutions. Most notably, active shooter incidents have become the new normal, with 2018 breaking grim records going back to the 1970sⁱ. 

Reports of sexual assault and other forms of violence directed against women are also on the riseⁱⁱ, just as social recognition improves and more stringent reporting requirements (for assault and abuse) come online. In parallel, safety issues have morphed in response to stark environmental and social realities, such as the need for climate-conscious building code standards to updated guidelines on supporting campus members with mental or physical disabilitiesⁱⁱⁱ. 

In turn, safety and security experts in schools, districts, and campuses increasingly recognize the need to address these issues in a more integrated fashion. After all, the operational mandates of both security and safety personnel are deeply intertwined. Many kinds of campus safety issues cascade into security vulnerabilities, and vice versa.

Take alcohol abuse on campuses, for example. Presumptively, the persistent challenge of binge drinking appears to have its most immediate repercussions on a student’s health and safety (for example, increasing their risk of alcohol poisoning or, surprisingly common, falling from a balcony^iv), a second look quickly highlights the overlap with security issues. In dealing with an inebriated student’s safety, administrators must often, simultaneously contend with criminal liability implications. Indeed, about half of sexual assaults on college campuses involve a situation in which the perpetrator, the victim, or both were consuming alcohol^v. 

Safety and security are deeply intertwined when it comes to regulating educational institutions, as well. In March 2018, the California Supreme Court held that postsecondary schools have a duty to protect students from “foreseeable violent acts” that occur while students are engaged in curricular activities. The ruling stemmed from a student’s suit alleging that the University of California at Los Angeles failed to take appropriate preventative measures against a mentally ill student who stabbed her in the university’s chemistry lab^vi. Such expansive interpretations of duty of care requirements have increased pressure on administrators to proactively manage the tricky intersection between safety issues like student health and the security of the campus community at large. 

Meanwhile, the costs associated with non-compliance with regulations can be cost prohibitive for an educational institution. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education fined the University of Montana nearly USD 1 million for failing to accurately comply with Clery Act reporting requirements that since 1990 have progressively tightened the reporting requirements that publicly funded universities are obligated to disclose to federal agencies and the public. This fine is second only to the USD 2.4 million fine assessed to Pennsylvania State University for its handling of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse case. Add to this, institutions of primary and secondary education face similar non-compliance risks in jurisdictions that mandate the reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect.

Nor are administrators off the hook in countries currently lacking explicit reporting statutes. In Australia, for instance, the news media has stepped in to name and shame, conducting aggressive oversight via Freedom of Information investigations to compel universities to release their campus assault and harassment data^vii. 

Fortunately, in this heightened safety and security risk climate, integrated safety, security, and crisis management technology purpose-built for educational institutions enables school, district, and campus officials to conduct varied activities in a uniform, consistent manner, an approach that continually protects all elements of the school, district, or university from internal and external threats. In the market for such a solution? This integrated safety, security, and crisis management software buyer’s guide details the precise software capabilities that educational institutions should be on the look for.

Capabilities to consider in an integrated solution

Principals, superintendents, and campus administrators are always looking to keep their respective schools, districts, and campuses safe, secure, and operating smoothly. The only question is how. Here are the tools and information they will need to manage safety, security, or business continuity effectively, from the smallest incident to a major event, or unplanned crisis or emergency. 

Ensure effective compliance reporting

Governmental bodies have traditionally taken a hands-on approach to the regulation of educational institutions. Not only are the reporting of security breaches often mandated, so too is the requirement to communicate relevant safety information during an emergency. 

In either scenario, schools and campuses will need integrated solutions that facilitate reporting to higher authorities, providing mass notifications to students and staff, and/or help inform authorities to build appropriate profiles for the risk area in question. Integrated mapping functionality, for one, enables schools and universities to map areas where high-risk behavior is known to occur. 

Further, on the compliance front, the U.S. Clery Act places extensive, crime disclosure obligations on colleges and universities receiving federal funding. It also mandates institutions to disclose their emergency response and evacuation procedures in their annual security reports. Both sets of requirements are extensive. Not only do institutions have to list the measures they’ll take, but they must also test those procedures annually, assessing viability against pre-defined, measurable goals.

How, then, to comply? Education institution-specific, integrated safety and security software helps colleges and universities create forms that easily capture Clery Act crimes, provision dashboards for statistical analysis of reported Clery crimes, and produce mandated (as well as ad-hoc) annual reports for viewing. Advanced technology also allows for easy crime information entry, using reporting categories and guidelines outlined in the DOE’s Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting.

Plans for incidents, emergency preparedness, and compliance

That’s not all, either. As mentioned, Clery Act requirements go well beyond just crime reporting; they also include emergency procedure disclosures. These wide-ranging requirements speak to the enormous complexities of keeping staff and students safe on campus, as well as a managing a wide array of campus operations, events, and incidents. 

Integrated safety and security software for educational institutions can help here, too – even for institutions outside of the U.S. After all, most educational institutions have duty of care obligations which can only be strengthened by robust emergency response protocols. As such, the integrated safety and security system they use to manage campus incidents and emergencies should do the following:

• Centralize information management, with tasking and checklists 
• Integrate with existing school administration systems, including student and class schedule details for mass notifications, roll checks during exercises/drills
• Integrate communication plans and templates to ensure everyone stays on the same page
• Enable the quick and easy coordination and dispatch of assets and resources to manage events and incidents 
• Include robust hazard and risk management to keep teams ahead of the curve 
• Automate key business procedures with fullyconfigurable, “fit-for-purpose” workflows

Further, integrated safety and security software should also enable educational institutions to plan for incidents, emergency preparedness, and manage compliance for drills and exercises around campus sites.

Provide easy access, everywhere 

Indeed, today’s campus is always changing. Whether managing the construction of a new dormitory or planning for a special event, all teams should have easy access to the guidelines, procedures, and forms that help manage
routine incidents as well as special events. 

And with the near ubiquity of smartphones among students and staff, modern universities must meet its users where they are, offering “lite app” capability to students (so they can more easily interface with administrators when in need), faculty (so they can report safety risks), and patrol staff (so they can log information in responding to an incident). 

Further, integrated GPS localization bolsters usability, while enabling crucial real-time situational awareness and intelligent two-way communication. So too do integrated assets and calendars. 

But when major incidents happen, acts quickly

What’s more, integrated functionality doesn’t have to come at the price of efficiencies in security incident response. Indeed, the right solution for educational institutions will also ease the incident management burden on dispatchers, by enabling planned, controlled, and automated incident response to any situation, no matter the incident (see more below) – it will also integrate easily with existing PSIM and SOAR platforms. 

The underlying feature set to support that benefit: automatic tasking and dispatching of patrol staff to respond. Also, when the incident does occur, software should be able to identify where students and staff are scheduled to be so as to facilitate campus alerts and track who’s been contacted. 

Other important security incident management features include: 

• Initiate and track investigations, persons of interest, capture evidence and logs, related actions, and follow best-practice standard methodologies
• Visualize locations of incidents, risks, people, and assets using the fully integrated mapping features
• Facilitates collaboration and improved multichannel communication, email, SMS, app notifications, etc.

The post-incident recovery stage is important, as well. And technology should give educational institutions the ability to conduct post-hoc damage and condition assessments.

Scales up and down, from BAU to major incidents and emergencies.

Campus safety and security teams do more than tackle critical incidents (unplanned) and major events (planned). Those are just the type of events that make the headlines. There’re also a number of routine business-as-usual
operations safety and security practitioners engage in on a daily basis, i.e. patrols, checks, inspections, and business-as-usual logging and reporting. 

The right advanced, integrated safety and security management solution should bring demonstrable efficiencies to those operations, as well: in essence, scaling up to meet extraordinary incidents and back down for routine operations. 

Finally, ensuring the safety and security of students while maintaining regulatory compliance and duty of care is no mean feat. Luckily, technology innovators in the field have purpose-built leading safety and security platforms for educational institutions, eliminating redundancies and improving response efficiency. These flexible platforms provide principals, superintendents, and administrators with all the information and tools they need to effectively manage incidents, risks, and hazards across campuses and stay on the right side of regulators. 

Citations

ⁱ BBC 2018, 2018 ‘worst year for US school shootings’. Available at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46507514. 

ⁱⁱ US Department of Education, Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Tool, “Trend: Reported VAWA Offenses 2014-2017.” Available at https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/Trend/public/#/answer/3/301/trend/-1/-1/-1/-1. 

ⁱⁱⁱ NRDC 2019, It’s Time to Update the Energy Code to the Best One Yet. Available at https://www.nrdc.org/experts/lauren-urbanek/its-time-updateenergy-code-best-one-yet.

^iv Injury Epidemiology Journal 2019, Falls from a balcony while intoxicated: a new injury trend among young adults? Available at https://injepijournal. biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40621-019-0181-3. 

^v Maryland Collaborative to Reduce College Drinking and Related Problems, 2016. Sexual assault and alcohol: What the research evidence tells us. College Park, MD: Center on Young Adult Health and Development. Available at https://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/sexualassault.pdf

^vi Lexology 2018, Postsecondary Schools Have a Duty of Care to Protect Students from Foreseeable Harm That Occurs During Curricular Activities. Available at https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9ce6e606-f1a4-4af0-9d21-9f26ad32a485.

^vii News Corp Australia 2017, Hunting Ground? Do Australian universities have the same problem as their US counterparts? Available at https://www. news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/hunting-ground-do-australian-universities-have-the-same-problem-as-their-us-counterparts/news-story/86 3c52cc871219e0503c5b6aef4a9e06