The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) with an aim to enhance maritime safety and security has selected AtHoc IWSAlerts to support its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

 

AtHoc is the pioneer and major player in providing enterprise-class, network-centric emergency notification systems to military, government and commercial organizations.

 

Officials with AtHoc said that the company's network-centric emergency mass notification system is the enterprise-wide standard for the USCG, capable of reaching 50,000 USCG personnel and maritime industry members with alerts and critical information.

 

According to company officials, AtHoc IWSAlerts is being used to improve communications and coordination among maritime partners -- whether they are industry or other agencies -- about the oil spill incident management.

 

Specifically, the USCG's enterprise-wide emergency notification system is actively being used for timely external communications such as waterway closures due to the oil spill and conversely to communicate about ports that are open.

 

Company officials said that in addition, the mass notification solution is being employed for communicating internal mission-critical information such as recalls to assist with response to the oil spill incident and notifying USCG staff to report to the USCG command center.

 

'In the ongoing oil spill disaster, the Coast Guard is using an IP-based emergency mass notification system for internal communications and response tool,' said USCG Lt. Commander Ted Kim, in a statement.

 

Commander Kim said that by using the power of network-centric alerting, the company is able to notify the community faster and share and process information about the oil spill.

 

"The system's ability also to collect information from all alert recipients provides us with unprecedented situational awareness based on information received from the entire community. All of which translates into being able to make better decisions more rapidly and communicating them swiftly to all stakeholders,' he said.

 

The same AtHoc technology used by the USCG serves as the standard of the U.S. Navy (known as the Wide Area Alerting and Notification System - WAAN) and is used throughout the Department of Defense (DoD).

 

In fact, it has been identified by the recent DoD report on the Ft. Hood incident as a best practice for modern mass notification capability.

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