Cassidian Communications, an EADS North America company, released its Self Registration Portal (SRP) for its GeoCast Web emergency notification solution. This company-hosted gateway, which earned praise for its design, adaptability, and ease of use in pre-launch customer testing, will provide public and private organizations a proactive means for gathering contact information from local residents, augmenting communications during all types of contingencies.
Cassidian Communications developed the SRP in response to a growing need for public safety operations to fill existing gaps within the contact data used to support their crisis communications strategies. It is designed to improve the quality and quantity of information employed by the GeoCast Web solution, which enables rapid notification inside highly targeted geographies such as flood plains and shelter-in-place communities. Through the SRP, residents can independently enlist to receive alerts and ultimately determine preferences for the type of communications provided, i.e., emergencies, non-emergencies, or both.
Once implemented, the SRP’s URL or quick link appears on the organization’s home page, routing visitors to PlantCML’s hosted portal. Here, participants can fill out a short form with their contact information and address. Addresses are plotted using Microsoft Bing maps, displaying a map point at the address’s precise latitude and longitude on the SRP’s digital, street-level display. If the positioning of the map point is incorrect, perhaps due to a typographical error, the individual can easily reposition the pin to the exact location of the address.
Participants may return to the SRP using a secure login and update their personal contact information as often as needed in order to ensure data accuracy. GeoCast Web seamlessly geo-codes this information and saves it to the application address database on a scheduled basis, further ensuring notification integrity. This also allows organizations to send future notifications through the application to individuals in the immediate area of an event.
The SRP for the GeoCast Web solution features highly robust administrative capabilities, allowing public and private organizations to establish system security parameters, as well as customize the interface. This includes defining the fields that can be viewed and/or completed by registrants, determining the location and zoom level of map displays, tailoring e-mail templates, and selecting fonts, colors, backgrounds, etc., to match their own website.
