How is Mobility Used in Crisis Communication Today?

Did you know that there are 2 billion smartphones in the world today? That’s billion with a “b.“ It is also estimated that 90 percent of adults in the U.S. own a cell phone. Two-thirds of those people find themselves checking their phones for messages, alerts or calls – even when they don’t notice the phone ringing or vibrating. Mobility usage is a critical part of our personal lives and, as a natural result, it is becoming a critical part of the business world as well.

Over the past several years Everbridge has worked with countless businesses to incorporate mobility within critical communications (i.e., incident, emergency and disaster response). And while we know there are innovative things happening in this area, we wanted to get some hard numbers/statistics on how organizations are leveraging the use of mobility to manage critical communication.

Everbridge surveyed hundreds of professionals responsible for public safety, business continuity, disaster recovery, IT/facilities operations and security on the role of mobile communication within their critical communication strategies and processes. All of the survey findings can be read in our new e-book, “Mobile Communication Aids Critical Communication Concerns and Response,” but several report highlights include:

• 86.2 percent of respondents said that mobile communication was important to their critical communication. Mobile capabilities, including support for mobile notification management and reporting, were ranked as the most important criteria when choosing a notification system.

 

• While 90.3 percent said that using a mobile device was critical to notifying people both “on scene” and off, almost 38 percent of respondents still manually call landline or mobile phones to get messages to impacted stakeholders.

   

• Approximately 80 percent of respondents said that during an emergency, having the ability to access images and updates from smartphone photos/comments could provide valuable context for decision-making and improve response effectiveness.

To learn more about the top trends in mobility for critical communication, and some of the challenges professionals in a wide array of fields are currently facing, read our new e-book, “Mobile Communication Aids Critical Communication Concerns and Response.”