Vision:

The Georgia State University Office of Emergency Management will strive to become a disaster-resistant university community.

Mission Statement:

Protect the university’s mission by mitigating against, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from all major emergencies/disasters.

Purpose

Core Values

• Ethical behavior
• Timely response to emergency needs and requirements
• Expertise in emergency/disaster management and contingency management
• Learning and growth for all our public safety partners
• Effective communications on how we conduct our business
• Quality service to our internal and external customers
• A safe, healthy and protected campus

Objectives

1. Provide emergency management oversight, coordination, and situational awareness to a broad and diverse group of university partners.
2. Employ an integrated all-hazards risk-based approach for mitigation, response, continuity of operations, recovery, and preparedness planning.
3. Create a “culture of preparedness” among students and employees by improving awareness and comprehension of what to do before, during, and after major emergency and disaster incidents.
4. Develop and implement strategies to achieve multidimensional and redundant emergency communication capabilities.
5. Build local, state, national, and international partnerships with other entities that share a vested interest in the enrichment of higher education emergency management.

Location

30 Courtland Street, SE, Ground Floor 88
Atlanta, GA 30303

Directions

Office Number: (404) 413-0783

Emergency Notifications

Mass notification via Panther Alert sends email, text and phone messages to a large audience in a rapid manner. This system is most effective during an emergency when all faculty, staff and students are loaded into the system. While this system is effective for ‘initial alerts,’ it is not designed to distribute multiple messages and allow for detailed situational awareness.

The Office of Emergency Management (OEM) uses several communication media to relay information to faculty, staff, students and the public. Notifications may go out through mass notification via Panther Alert, the outdoor public announcement (PA) system, university website postings, phone trees, campus email and/or the university police vehicles’ PA system.

Redundant communications are needed to supplement this system.

This system is tested once every semester.

As part of the Panther Alert System, Georgia State has implemented several services, including a desktop alert. In an emergency situation, an alert will broadcast a pop-up message to all enrolled workstations.

Information about Desktop Alerts can be found here.

A Web-based application allows Georgia State to broadcast an emergency alert banner on the university homepage and may act as a hyper-link to a secure Emergency Broadcast Message Web-page. In a significant emergency, this capability is the primary means to effectively communicate with the local community and concerned personnel. With this Web-based application, the university will be able to post emergency messages and provide updates in a timely and efficient manner.

This system allows OEM to notify university personnel of a sudden emergency or incident that threatens life safety while they are in transit throughout the campus. This system has a severe weather warning horn/siren and voice capability and can be activated remotely through command modules installed in the Police Communications Center and OEM. There are six speaker arrays throughout the Downtown Atlanta and Perimeter College campuses.

This system is tested every month.

This system allows GSUPD or OEM to remotely activate select buildings’ public address systems throughout campus (all-building or floor-specific) and provide detailed information and emergency response guidance to the building occupants. This system(s) is tested once every semester.

Select police vehicles are outfitted with loud speaker systems that could be used in localized emergencies and to disseminate location or event specific information.