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April 26, 2017

nSide Severe Weather Awareness

nSide Severe Weather Awareness

One thing we know for certain is that severe weather of one kind or another is a regular occurrence. In fact, as I write this, a line of severe weather is bearing down on the state from the west.

While this is not a risk you can ever prevent entirely, you can minimize the potential risk of harm by planning (using nSide Map and EOP), practicing regular severe weather drills (using nSide EOP), and by maintaining severe weather awareness, to make sure you have the information you need to make the best possible decisions before and during a potentially dangerous weather event.

With your nSide Map and EOP, we try to cover each of these areas of weather safety preparedness. With nSide you can plan severe weather shelter locations (Map), prepare detailed Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) for the event of severe weather and reunification and recovery after, and complete severe weather drills (EOP).

And today, we’re introducing Severe Weather Awareness to the nSide platform.

The first two modules of weather awareness are live weather alerts from the National Weather Service, and Weather Radar. These are available today in the Maps menu.

Live Weather Alerts from the National Weather Service in the nSide Map
Live Weather Radar

As we continue to build the platform for school safety, we’d like to understand more about how you prepare for and monitor severe weather events that may affect your school and community. And how you train or prepare for severe weather, by drills or other planning.

As always, we’re open to hear any way we can help you to be as prepared and successful as possible as you serve your students and the community.

Leave a comment here, and join the conversation on the nSide Community!

April 26, 2017
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Automated External Defibrillator(AED) on the wall
April 20, 2017

Would you know where the closest AED is located in the case of an emergency?

Would you know where the closest AED is located in the case of an emergency?

The Today Show on NBC recently produced a story about Bob Harper from “The Biggest Loser” and a heart attack he experienced while training in his gym. He survived, primarily because an automated external defibrillator (AED) was located in the gym. These are devices that help save lives in this type of event by delivering “a dose of electric current to the heart.”

However, if you needed to locate one in your school, church, or facility, would you know where to look? With less than 3 percent of Americans trained in CPR, the survival rate of a heart attack drops to 6 percent if no one assists the victim. Simply knowing where an AED is located can dramatically help those rates. The video below is an example that puts people to the test in a gym setting:

An AED saved Bob Harper, but could you find one in an emergency? Celebrity fitness trainer Bob Harper says an AED – an automatic external defibrillator – helped save his life when he…w

How nSide Helps

When nSide is used to map a facility, lifesaving safety equipment like AEDs become instantly visible, highlighted, and searchable in accessible digital floor plans used for planning, safety drills, review, and emergency access. When the Data team visits your site, they will visually inspect every aspect of the building and make sure all AEDs are located and represented on the map.

Planning, Preparing, and Practicing

nSide firmly believes that planning, preparing, and practicing concepts are key to thriving in a safe and productive environment. By planning, all relevant stakeholders can team together to assess their current resources and put together an executable plan for dealing with an emergency. By preparing, planners can make sure they have all of the tools they need to execute the plan. Lastly, by practicing, the organization can execute the plan they have put together, noting inefficiencies along the way and adjusting accordingly. These three concepts are a never-ending circle, and should be put to use frequently in order to make sure the emergency operation plan can be as effective as possible.

Use Case for AEDs

In the case of AEDs, seconds are precious. We can assume in a real-life emergency, staff and responders will not have time to pull up the nSide map to find the closest AED. This is why we believe the planning, preparing, and practicing concepts and repetition are essential in a small-scale, single individual type of event.

nSide is a tool to help organizations and their staff better understand place and their surroundings. Each organization should use their Emergency Operation Plans in order to understand their buildings/campuses (i.e. “Where do I need to go to assist the person in need?”), the resources needed for this type of response (i.e. “I need to use an AED for the victim, and where are they located throughout the building?”), and who is best qualified to respond to the situation (i.e. “What skills do staff members possess?”).

To be better prepared, we recommend regularly reviewing the Emergency Operation Plans with your team, having the nSide map continuously updated, and staff skills surveys and user profiles being completed for all staff members.

How Have You Prepared for This Type of Situation?

We would like to understand more how the use of an AED in an event has been used with nSiders. Has your organization experienced a similar situation? How did you respond? What do you do to train or prepare for this situation? In the discussion topic on the nSide Community, let us know how you would respond in the case of an AED needing to be used.

April 20, 2017
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table-top-melanie-blog
October 15, 2016

nSide Supports FEMA Sponsored Virtual Table-Top Active Shooter Drill

nSide Supports FEMA Sponsored Virtual Table-Top Active Shooter Drill

nSide was invited by Franklin, Southhampton, Isle of Wight, VA Local Emergency Planning Committee and Paul D. Camp Community College, Franklin, VA to participate and support a FEMA sponsored Table-Top Active Shooter Drill at Paul D. Camp Community College, Franklin, VA campus on 01/12/16.The exercise, facilitated by Western Tidewater Medical Reserve Corps, was a virtual table-top, re-enactment held simultaneously with other organizations across the country. The scenario was an Active Shooter simulation occurring on campus during a busy school day. Over 80 drill attendees participated which included 5 community college departments, WTHD and PDCCC executive leadership, Emergency Management experts, Franklin VA Police, Franklin VA Fire, local Chapter of the American Red Cross, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FBImany local k-12 school officials, and others.

The scope of the exercise was to focus on the role of each organization in response to potential consequences of an active shooter scenario, as well as the interdisciplinary and interagency coordination both at the local, regional, state, and Federal level. The drill stepped through a series of discussion based modules with learning, collaboration and discussion questions and goals so all attendees could better understand each group’s role, become better prepared and visualize the response and recovery processes. During the drill exercise, the facilitators engaged all participants about how best to respond to and disseminate new information constantly coming in via phone calls, texts and tweets from students, faculty and first responders on site.

The team stressed the following primary goals throughout the exercise:

– Activating emergency plans and procedures

– Appropriately interfacing with the command structure

– Developing public information and media plans to handle concerns

– Determining resource needs of the community and potential sources of support and requesting resources, as appropriate

– Identifying coordination and policy issues regarding multi-agency coordination systems.

All attendees were focused on preparing for an active shooter incident and defining and honing the 5 mission critical core capabilities:

– Prevention

– Protection

– Mitigation

– Response

– Recovery

nSide provided a campus and building visualization application that added clarity to the locations of entries and exits, location of the shooter and how best to respond. nSide web and mobile versions of the software were projected on a large display screen, depicting full campus views and then zooming to the area of the building at the center of the incident. The campus and building visualization application showed entrances into the building with 360 pictures of each room, walk throughs of the building, critical fire and medical assets, identification of other potential dangers including hazardous materials, gases and contaminants. Additionally, nSide’s campus visualization mobile app showed rooms as they were cleared with casualty and fatality icons to mark where recovery teams needed to respond. Attendees were very impressed by visualizations provided by nSide. Several attendees stated the maps provided excellent information throughout the event to best understand the location and what was happening as the response was underway and how recovery would be rolled out. nSide provided an excellent resource to help with decision making and planning.

We applaud these efforts to create a realistic event for learning and using innovative new technologies like nSide to be better prepared to respond more effectively and efficiently. These types of training exercises make a dramatic impact on saving lives, minimizing the impact of an incident and protecting property in case of an emergency..

We thank Paul D. Camp Community College, Franklin, Southampton, Isle of Wight, VA Local Emergency Planning Committee and Western Tidewater Medical Reserve Corps for allowing nSide to support this exercise.

October 15, 2016
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monitor-social-media-jacob-blog
October 15, 2016

Proactively Monitoring Social Media

Proactively Monitoring Social Media

Baldwin County Schools, AL is responding to threats of school violence posted via social media this week. While local authorities believe there is no credibility to the threat, school administrators and first responders are taking the necessary steps to ensure security on campus:http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2016/01/shootout_threat_at_robertsdale.html#incart_river_home

In the age of the online social community, many students’ first stop for voicing adolescent frustrations is the World Wide Web. There, followers hundreds of miles away from “reality” can provide a sense of confirmation, validity and connection. Additional attractions, like the perception of anonymity and a lack of consequences for conduct online, serve as justifications for their behavior. (1)

Over the recent years the US has witnessed a surge in the number of precautionary campus lockdowns and school closings. Overwhelmingly, these actions are taken by central office administration because of threats posted on social media.

Key Points for K-12 Campus Social Media:

  • Virtual Vigilance — In many cases a simple search engine ping will generate results for posts related to a certain topic or location. Designate a staff member to comb through online posts and social media as part of their daily roles and responsibilities.
  • Law Enforcement Liaison — While many K-12 districts have the benefit of on campus School Resource Officers, or School Police Officers, many do not. Regardless, each campus should have a point of contact that communicates with law enforcement and other first responders in the community on a regular basis, especially when it pertains to student behavior on social media.
  • Parent Communication — Parents are arguably your most demanding stakeholders and your most valuable resources at the K-12 level. Keep them in the loop on behavioral changes or peer issues and they should return the favor. You might also be able to enlist assistance from them with monitoring social media outlets.

Remember, the intent of terroristic threats is to create fear and instability in the status quo. As long as we remain vigilant, communicate with our first responders and strive to positively impact the root of the problem for the kids that need our help, we can continue to ensure a safe learning environment for all.

(1) Julie Zhuo, “Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt,” The New York Times, November 29, 2010,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30zhuo.html (accessed January 25, 2016).

October 15, 2016
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internet-of-things-blog
October 15, 2016

Unlocking the Potential of IoT with nSide

Unlocking the Potential of IoT with nSide

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term coined in 1999 [1] to describe the growing field of everyday devices that can be internet connected. Prominent examples are the Nest Learning Thermostat, Amazon Echo, and Philips Hue. These devices, and scores of others now on the market; will let a person monitor and control their home HVAC, turn off and on; or even set the color of their lighting; and issue voice commands to control systems or order the next latest gadget from Amazon.

The rapid proliferation of these new devices create a threefold problem:

  • interoperability between vendors
  • centralized data collection
  • meaningful data visualization

We humbly submit the unbiased opinion that nSide can solve these problems, and our solution will include growing IoT support throughout 2016.

nSide’s primary focus is providing innovative data visualization with a spatial reference — as of this writing the data, which can by dynamic, consists primarily of styled icons representing fixed or mobile assets; overlaid on top of building floor plans and street or satellite maps. While the assets may be mobile; the attributes of those assets are generally static: serial number, user manual, recent photo, name, etc. With nSide’s upcoming IoT integration; nSide will support dynamic data attributes such as temperature, humidity, voltage, color, etc. As a vendor agnostic solution, nSide can aggregate dynamic data from multiple vendors. nSide will provide published API’s for customer integrations, and a list pre-built integrations.

nSide is a cloud based solution, hosted in robust data centers with multi-site redundancies. With dedicated iOS and Android apps and a powerful web-based, platform independent interface; nSide provides a centralized, high availability data collection and presentation mechanism.

One of nSide’s core features is making existing data much more useful by presenting it visually in a meaningful context. Since humans are primarily visual, and we like to think in spatial terms; nSide leverages our GIS expertise and mapping to present data in new and novel ways. Compare nSide to the traditional database in the example of HVAC data management. A facility may have several HVAC unit, each with unique info; and important info like the user manual, service records, etc. In a traditional database this data would be organized by a user defined name (East first floor main HVAC unit 1), or a unique identifier such as the serial number. While all of the important information is there, it is not presented in a context that makes it easy for humans to visually process the information and, for instance, plan the route through the building to check on each unit; or even to know intuitively where each unit is physically located within the facility. This example can be further expanded to include a new maintenance employee. Suppose the new employee needs to service “East First Floor Main HVAC Unit 1.” While the employee can intuit the unit is located on the east end and serves the first floor; the employee cannot infer the exact location of the unit as it may be on the roof, outside the building; or in a maintenance area. Enter nSide — the unit with all of the same attributes is visible in the context of a floor plan of the building. The system is also searchable, so the unknown unit can be easily pinpointed on the map. By using a spatial context, nSide provides meaningful data visualization for all data provided; especially dynamic data. Continuing the example of the HVAC unit; it is now possible to visually assess the real-time temperatures and status of each room and HVAC unit in the context of the building floorplan. Compared to a generic dashboard, the spatial context exponentially increases the usefulness and intuitiveness of the data.

As the list of available IoT products and applications grow, the usefulness will be determined by the ease with which data can be accessed; and whether the data is presented in a meaningful context. nSide provides a spatially referenced context which is visually intuitive; and by maintaining a vendor agnostic approach, can bridge the gap left by disparate vendor systems.

October 15, 2016
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lamar-VASSS-blog
October 15, 2016

Virtual Alabama School Safety Summit — Preparing and Responding to Crisis

Virtual Alabama School Safety Summit — Preparing and Responding to Crisis

The 6th Annual Virtual Alabama School Safety Summit will be hosted by nSide, and partnered with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and Alabama State Department of Education on February 29thand March 1st, 2016 in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Summit will provide a discussion of emergency preparedness and response solutions and networking opportunities with first responders and K-12 public and private schools, colleges and universities. This year’s Summit includes solutions and discussions surrounding facilities management and how it plays a major role in emergency preparedness as well as day-to-day operations of your campus.

The Summit will highlight and focus on training and discussions for emergency operations plans, vehicle tracking, a mobile environment for campus maps, active shooter scenarios, and overall school safety.

October 15, 2016
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msu-cybersecurity-blog
October 15, 2016

nSide Visits Mississippi State University to Inspire Students to Pursue Careers in Technology and Cybersecurity

nSide Visits Mississippi State University to Inspire Students to Pursue Careers in Technology and Cybersecurity

On Wednesday, July 20th CEO Dr. Steve McKinney, Data Division Manager Robert Nall, and Chief Network Engineer Justin Billingsley traveled to Mississippi State University to speak with middle and high school boys and teachers attending the GenCyber funded Bulldog Bytes Computing Camps.The GenCyber program is a partnership between the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Mississippi State has hosted GenCyber summer camps each summer since the program’s inception in 2014, and nSide team members were excited to travel south to talk with this year’s participants about the relationships between technology, safety, and network vulnerability.

The NSA and NSF partnered with schools and universities in 37 different states this summer in an effort to increase cybersecurity awareness amongst teachers and adolescents and to address anticipated shortages in the cyber workforce. For example, in 2015, 90% of members of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) surveyed agreed that there was a shortage of cybersecurity professionals. This shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals is an eminent security threat for the United States, reflected by President Obama’s February 2016 identification of cybersecurity as one of the United States’ “most important challenges.”

Dr. McKinney spent time talking with Bulldog Bytes campers and teachers about the Internet of Things, inviting listeners to contemplate where technology has been, where it is currently, and where the future will take us, emphasizing the new challenges and increased security needs as more and more people and devices connect. Robert spoke as a geographer turned techie, explaining the importance of code literacy for all kinds of jobs and his tools-based approach to programming. Justin, responsible for the security of nSide’s system, addressed system vulnerabilities and the nonstop attention needed to deter and prevent hackers. Dr. McKinney closed things off, intimating to campers that it was his experience at 12 years old in a summer computer camp that lead him down the path that currently has him positioned as CEO of a tech startup named by CIO Magazine as one of the “50 Most Promising Google Technology Solution Providers” in 2015. He encouraged campers to use technology to address problems, have big ideas, and to make the world a better and safer place.

Contributed by: Stacy Kastner, PhD, Mississippi State University

October 15, 2016
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October 15, 2016

nSide Participates in University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) Active Shooter Drill

nSide Participates in University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) Active Shooter Drill

nSide was invited by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s (UTC) Emergency Management Team including Executive Director, Robie Robinson and EM Specialist, Tim Pridemore to participate and support an Active Shooter Drill at UTC on 12/16/15.

The event was a ‘table top’ reenactment of an actual Active Shooter simulation occurring on campus during a busy school day within a heavily populated school building. Drill attendees included over 10 university departments, UTC executive leadership, Campus Police, Emergency Management experts, Chattanooga Police, Chattanooga Fire, Hamilton County EMA, UTK and many others.

The drill stepped through a series of ‘learning’ and ‘collaboration’ goals and ‘Inject Points’ so all attendees could better understand each group’s role, become better prepared and visualize how such an event would unfold during response and recovery. Robie and Tim lead the drill exercise engaging all participants with thoughtful questions posing how best to respond as each minute passed and new information was flooding in via phone calls, texts and tweets from students, faculty and first responders on site.

The team stressed the following primary goals throughout the drill:

  1. Life Safety
  2. Incident Stabilization
  3. Property Conservation

With everyone focused on successfully pursuing and fulfilling these, there was clarity to the actions to be taken at each moment.

nSide provided a campus and building visual that also added greatly clarity to the location of the shooter and how best to respond. nSide web and mobile versions of the software were projected on two large display screens, depicting a full campus views and then both applications zooming down to the building at the center of the incident. Moving into the building with 360 pictures of each room, walk throughs of all floors, showing critical fire and medical assets as well as identifying further potential dangers including hazardous materials, gases and contaminants that could cause more damage by the intruder.

UTC executives were very impressed by visualizations provided by nSide. Several executives stated the maps provided excellent information throughout the event allowing them to best understand the location and what was happening as the response was underway as well as how it ended and how recovery would be rolled out.

Robie and Tim both thanked the nSide team for participating. Robie stated,

“I think including nSide in the drill was great! It allowed everyone to better understand the area and all responders and administrators being able to access the map answered a lot of questions keeping everyone up to date throughout the event”

We applaud UTC’s Emergency Management team for their excellent efforts to engage the greater Chattanooga emergency response teams, create such a realistic event for learning and using innovative new technologies like nSide to be better prepared to respond more effectively and efficiently. This training exercise and those to follow make a dramatic impact on saving lives, minimizing the impact of an incident and protecting property in case of an emergency at UTC.

We thank UTC for allowing nSide to participate and working so hard to create a safer environment for everyone at UTC.

October 15, 2016
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university-of-miami
October 15, 2016

University of Miami Signs On With nSide

University of Miami Signs On With nSide

The University of Miami is a private research university with more than 16,000 students from around the world, the University of Miami is a vibrant and diverse academic community focused on teaching and learning, the discovery of new knowledge, and service to the South Florida region and beyond.

Founded in 1925, The University comprises 11 schools and colleges serving undergraduate and graduate students in more than 180 majors and programs. In 2014, for the sixth year in a row, U.S. News & World Report ranked UM among the top 50 universities in the country in its “Best Colleges” listings. U.S. News also cites several of its programs in “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”

Why nSide?

The University of Miami’s’ Emergency Management Director, Scott Burnotes had a vision of being able to view all 250 buildings on UM’s campus and all emergency/critical assets from the privacy of his office.

nSide was the answer to Scott’s vision. In addition, nSide’s ease of use, and ease of collecting new and updated data is so easy, his staff was able to handle this work themselves. Scott and his staff were able to be trained in less than 2 hours. Then they were off an running. The nSide team loaded all the floor plans from pdfs for all buildings and all floors so Scott’s team could visit each building and capture all the data at their pace.

“I had been thinking about this type of solution (nSide) for a long time, and here it is! The fact that it’s so easy to use, learn and collect data, makes this perfect for the University of Miami. I see nSide having a huge positive impact on our abilities to better protect our students and respond to all types of emergencies!”

Scott Burnotes

For more information about how we can help you, contact us at 800.604.1822 or info@nside.io.

October 15, 2016
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geography-awareness-week
November 22, 2015

nSide Gives Back to Community for Geography Awareness Week

nSide Gives Back to Community for Geography Awareness Week

Established by presidential proclamation in 1987, November 15–21, 2015 marked the 28th annual Geography Awareness Week. Organized by National Geographic Education Programs, their website explains the the event was founded in order to address a geography gap in K-12 education and to “excite people about geography as both a discipline and as a part of everyday life.”

nSide team members Robert Nall, Cameron Martin, and Seth Thompson were excited to join McBride Elementary third graders in Muscle Shoals, Alabama last Wednesday in support of this important national initiative.

As a state, Alabama has the good fortune of strong geography allies in The University of North Alabama Department of Geography and the Alabama Geographic Alliance (AGA). UNA and AGA have been working together since 2014 to institute a geospatial semester for local high schools. The result of their successful collaboration is a dual enrollment course that introduces AP high school students to geography themes and geospatial technologies. Each high school class collaborates on a project, and this year, at Muscle Shoals High School, the class hosted a “Journey with Geography” event for area third graders. On Wednesday, November 18th, third graders from McBride Elementary filed into the Muscle Shoals high school library and were greeted by geography-themed learning stations representing different regions around the world.

The Data and GIS team from nSide joined the event to facilitate a hands-on GIS demonstration as part of the event. Focusing on Latin America, Nall, Martin, and Thompson introduced students to Google My Maps, a web-based application that allows Google users to create and disseminate maps and spatial information. Third graders were instructed in digitizing, describing patterns, and asking spatial questions. Students were collectively captivated by creating spatial data, adding attributes, and visualizing different basemaps. “These kids are used to technology, so they caught on extremely quick. You could tell the excitement when they started to be able to identify patterns in the maps they were creating. It was a lot of fun,” says Nall, GIS Manager. Thompson, GIS Analyst, was also impressed with the third graders, he explained: “I really enjoyed seeing the excitement and creativeness from the students as they took ownership of their maps. It was great to see them engaged and asking spatial questions.” Allie Grissom, third grade teacher at McBride Elementary, praised the interactive spatial thinking activity designed by the nSide team: “My kids loved mapping the locations using GIS technology in the computer lab. They were fascinated that they could pinpoint locations and determine distances instantly and see satellite images of those locations halfway across the globe.”

nSide takes great pride in participating in community outreach events, especially those that enable them to provide educational opportunities for kids. “The opportunity to work with kids at such a young age, providing a look at GIS and what you can do with it, was very gratifying. The students seemed to take pride in personalizing the maps and calling it their own,” explained Martin, GIS Analyst. nSide would like to thank the University of North Alabama Department of Geography, the Alabama Geographic Alliance, and Muscle Shoals High School for the invitation to participate in this event.

Other contributing authors: Cameron Martin, Seth Thompson

November 22, 2015
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