Integrated Safety and Security Management for a Comprehensive Approach to Campus Security

Breaking down the silos between Safety and Security helps maintain duty of care on campus

For institutions of higher learning, the pace of change and number of safety and security challenges have accelerated in recent years. Active shooter incidents have become the new normal, with 2018 breaking grim records going back to the 1970s for injuries and fatalities from school shootingsⁱ. Reports of sexual assault and other forms of violence against women have also seen a significant uptick on campusesⁱⁱ, a result of shifting social recognition and more stringent reporting requirements. In parallel, safety issues have morphed in response to environmental and social realities, from the need for climate-conscious building code standards to updated guidelines on supporting campus members with mental or physical disabilitiesⁱⁱⁱ. 

Traditionally, keeping these security and safety risks separate, i.e. managed by different teams on campus, may have made sense on a theoretical level. After all, dealing with malicious threats like shooters, bombers, or other forms of intentional violence has traditionally been the domain of security experts. Meanwhile, safety issues like workplace accidents or hazardous materials management typically fall under different regulatory frameworks and departmental oversight. But in reality, the operational mandates of both security and safety personnel are deeply intertwined. They should, therefore, be managed under the
same integrated safety and security portfolio.

The evidence suggests that many kinds of safety vulnerabilities, particularly on campus, cascade into security incidents, and vice versa. Take alcohol abuse, for example. Presumptively, binge drinking, a persistent challenge on campuses, 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 inebriated student’s safety, administrators must simultaneously contend with criminal liability implications: about half of sexual assaults on college campuses involve a situation in which the perpetrator, the victim, or both were consuming alcohol^v. 

What can fit under the banner of integrated safety and security

• Security management
• Environmental, health and safety management
• Crisis and crisis information management
• Emergency management
• Business continuity management
• Incident management
• Case management
• Dispatch/resource management
• Risk management
• Governance, risk management and compliance (GRC)

Incident types that cross the boundaries of safety and security

• Bomb threat
• Breach of License Conditions
• Chemical & Fuel Spill
• Compliance Breach
• Environmental Incident
• Fire / explosion
• Hazardous materials incident
• Severe weather - all hazards
• Vehicle Incident
• And many, many more

The logic applies to regulatory compliance, as well, long considered the exclusive purview of Risk and Safety teams. 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, stemming 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 broad interpretations of duty of care requirements, widely applicable in most advanced economies, increase pressure on administrators to proactively manage the tricky intersection between safety issues like student health and the security of the campus community at large.

Nor are administrators off the hook in countries currently lacking federal legislation explicitly mandating the reporting of crime data on campuses. In Australia, for instance, the news media has stepped in, conducting aggressive oversight via Freedom of Information investigations to compel universities to release their campus assault and harassment data^vii. 

Despite the demonstrable overlap in mandates, though, Safety and Security managers on campuses operate under different, often siloed portfolios. What’s more, each has implemented standalone safety and security management systems to pursue what are fundamentally, integrated safety and security priorities – for institutions with limited budgets, specifically, the temptation to patch standalone products or solutions onto the most acutely felt campus wellbeing management pain points has been particularly strong. Although fundamentally well-intentioned, these moves resulting in the practical, on-the-ground siloing of Safety and Security programs have had major implications, both for the institution’s ability to prevent loss and to maintain its duty of care obligations to employees and students. 

Since the two objectives are very much linked, the policies, procedures, and tools to achieve them should be too. To fully highlight the case for a holistic approach, this best-practice guide will outline the key capabilities technology solutions should provide administrators to ensure a proactive, responsive, and resilient approach to integrated campus safety and security management. 

Further risks of a siloed safety and security approach

Partly in response to the prevalence of highly mediatized shootings in recent years, universities are feeling the need to increase their budgets on safety and security^viii. Little empirical accounting has emerged, though, of the cost effectiveness of different spending approaches – even as the school security market has ballooned into a USD 2.7 billion industry^ix.

What is clear, however, is that siloed safety and security programs, systems, and products can incur many hidden costs. For one, training staff to use multiple distinct systems or tools represents not only a waste of finite financial resources but can also lead to an inefficient incident response when the event in question is at the intersection of safety and security. 

At the same time, the costs associated with noncompliance of regulations are increasing, as well. 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, which 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. Caught between the need to invest in campus wellbeing intelligently and avoid running afoul of regulators, some universities reportedly spend over a million dollars a year solely on compliance^x. 

The benefits of an integrated approach

In stark contrast, integrated safety and security management broadens the spectrum of threats that Safety and Security teams must tackle under the same portfolio to all threats and hazards classified as probable (based on risk-based planning) to cause injury, illness, property damage, business disruption, or environmental impact. 

Integrated safety and security management technology itself enables those different teams (be they Safety and Security, or others) to conduct varied activities in a uniform, consistent manner, an approach that continually protects all elements of the institution from internal and external threats. The benefits of an integrated approach are manifold:

Comprehensive coverage

When disparate safety and security management systems (often locked apart from each other) aren’t set up to share relevant information, despite the demonstrated fact that security threats cascade into safety incidents (and vice versa), information flow gets lost in the cracks. An integrated approach, on the other hand, allows universities to create a log trail across Safety and

Security teams that increases accountability and limits liability in the case of an incident, as when student health issues intersect with student safety. It also enables streamlined compliance across relevant regulations with overlapping mandates.

Improved efficiency

An integrated approach allows teams to avoid duplicating data collection and incident reporting procedures, as well as lowers training costs. Universities can give the same system to their planning teams as their security teams, streamlining coordination for everything from managing construction projects to planning for special events like concerts or controversial speakers. Not only does this efficiency eliminate redundancies but also improves response efficiency in the critical situations where speed is most necessary.

Controlled costs

An integrated approach views safety and security holistically, limiting the potential for cost overruns brought on by one-off investments. Too often, the lack of coordination between departments creates expensive blind-spots, as when key-card systems intended to bolster student security come with a surprise software licensing cost in order to integrate visitor management capabilities. What’s more, an integrated platform cuts down on the overhead of ensuring that separate point solutions keep communicating with each other. The fact is they often don’t; data connectors break down, leaving response teams in the lurch.

Features to consider in an integrated safety/security platform for education

In considering an end-to-end solution, what should educational institutions be looking for when procuring an integrated safety and security platform? Here are some of the key capabilities to consider based on industry best practices:

Industry-leading functionalities

With the near ubiquity of smartphones amongst staff and students, universities should meet their users where they are. Enterprise solutions should offer a smartphone app for different categories of users, enabling students to easily interface with administrators when in need, faculty to report safety risks (i.e. a fallen tree on the quad), or patrol staff to log information easily when responding to an incident. GPS localization should also enable real-time situational awareness and intelligent two-way communication.

Customized specifically for your institution

As the stewards of so many young adults, universities have special requirements and responsibilities. Solutions should enable the easy reporting of requirements specific to university settings, whether Clery Act incident tracking, reporting, and analytics, integration with existing school systems, or mass alert systems that respond to campus-specific needs. Additional functionalities supporting parking and lost and found can also add convenience to campus life while contributing to safety. 

End-to-end, usable and flexible

Campuses are constantly 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. To that end, users should have access to visualizable tools including maps, assets, and calendars, in addition to having access to the information and tools most relevant to their needs and roles on campus.

No matter what role you play on campus, 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 built leading, integrated safety and security platforms, purpose-built for educational institutions, that eliminate redundancies and improve response efficiency. These platforms provide educational institutions with all the information and tools they need to break down silos, effectively manage incidents, risks, and hazards, 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-update energy-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/863c 52cc871219e0503c5b6aef4a9e06

^viii. Forbes 2015, Push For Campus Safety Means More Guns, Officers, Security Spending. Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/ jillcastellano/2015/06/11/push-for-campus-saftey-means-more-guns-officers-security-spending/#61085c826733. 

^ix. Forbes 2015, Push For Campus Safety Means More Guns, Officers, Security Spending. Available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/ jillcastellano/2015/06/11/push-for-campus-saftey-means-more-guns-officers-security-spending/#61085c826733. 

^x. James G Martin Center 2017, Universities Are Spending Millions on Ineffective Campus Security Initiatives. Available at https://www.jamesgmartin. center/2017/03/universities-spending-millions-ineffective-campus-security-initiatives/.