Many U.S. Cities Including New York, San Francisco, and Major Metros Throughout Florida Utilize Everbridge to Mitigate the Compounding Threat from Overlapping Crises: COVID-19 Pandemic, Wildfires and Hurricanes
Serving Eight of the Ten Largest U.S. Cities, and Over 3,700 Municipalities and Counties Across the Country, Everbridge Enables Local Governments to Execute Best Practices to Keep Citizens Safe and Informed Amid Critical Events
BURLINGTON, Mass., August 24, 2020 – Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event management (CEM), today announced a number of major U.S. cities relying on the company’s platform to coordinate emergency response and safeguard the public from the combined threats posed by COVID-19, as well as wildfires in the western part of the country and hurricanes along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coasts.
State and local governments need to be proactive in their response and recovery to events impacting the public that range from severe weather, active shooter, and hazmat situations to occurrences such as heat advisories, rolling blackouts, large-scale gatherings, protests and construction projects. These events require information to be shared with residents, visitors and emergency personnel, over any device, providing the confidence that critical information like evacuation routes, lockdowns, or road closures reach recipients immediately.
“A critical part of any emergency response is the ability to disseminate accurate information in a timely manner. Our dedication to public messaging is at the forefront of our mission to connect with every individual we serve, providing them life-saving information before, during, and after an emergency,” said NYC Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell.
“Our partnership with Everbridge allows us to communicate effectively with New Yorkers during difficult times. This held true during COVID-19, where our Notify NYC team developed a text alert short code in both English and Spanish to provide individuals with a streamlined method of receiving critical information about the pandemic. This crucial messaging continued through heat emergencies and Tropical Storm Isaias. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Everbridge’s first-class team and remain committed to providing New Yorkers with the essential information they need no matter the challenge or emergency.”
In Hoboken, New Jersey, Isaias’s heavy winds downed trees and power lines, leaving more than one million people statewide without power. “Preparing for the summer hurricane season is challenging under normal conditions, but during a pandemic, it calls for unique measures,” said Ravi Bhalla, Mayor of Hoboken. “Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, we have reminded our residents of our commitment to sharing potentially life-saving information.”
Continued Mayor Bhalla, “With an unusually active hurricane season ahead of us, we’ve renewed that commitment. Our number one priority is keeping our people safe by providing them access to real-time public information when they need it most. Our partnership with Everbridge allows Hoboken to disseminate this information quickly and accurately, ensuring residents have access to vital data, whether it be about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, impending storms, or other threats to the city.”
Cities, counties and municipalities across the U.S. leverage the Everbridge Platform to execute the following six best practices for effectively communicating with citizens during a crisis:
- Deploy a population-wide opt-in means for the public to receive critical updates and information via their mobile device – provide communities with a quick and easy-to-implement, opt-in solution for citizens to text a keyword or zip-code to an established SMS short-code.
- Contribute to a risk data sharing network that connects the public sector with the private sector – enable government agencies, hospitals, universities, airports, and local businesses to share life-saving information to respond quicker to emergency situations.
- Leverage pre-established communications templates – empower government agencies to send more complex emergency notifications quickly and at scale to over 100 different modalities.
- Execute special/functional needs registries – identify at-risk citizens during an emergency to ensure high-priority individuals (i.e. nursing homes, hospitals) receive specialized care.
- Create incident zones by geographic location – trigger mobile emergency alerts from government authorities when an individual travels into, or returns back to, an area designated as an active critical event.
- Maximize outreach with robust database of contacts – to complement opt-in databases, emergency officials turn to the Everbridge Resident Connection database – a robust database of landline, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and cellular business and residential contacts to reach the greater population with more confidence.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact how municipalities navigate the public’s return to work, return to school, and return to public spaces, many cities now face the impact of an extremely active hurricane and wildfire season.
Current wildfires in areas grappling with the COVID-19 virus present unprecedented threats for firefighters, emergency managers and the public, particularly when it comes to evacuations. Cities such San Francisco, and counties including Sonoma and Lake, turn to the Everbridge Platform to warn residents of fire dangers and poor air quality. In Napa County, where the Hennessy Fire continues to threaten residents, the Office of Emergency Services relies on Everbridge to alert at-risk residents to evacuate their homes and take shelter, all while adhering to social distancing guidelines.
“As we head into wildfire season, we are focused on prepping the public to create an emergency plan and listen to authorities,” explained Soraya Sutherlin, Joint Information Center Manager for Alert SouthBay, an Everbridge customer and regional communications system shared by 13 California cities including Inglewood, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, and Torrance. “People are reluctant to leave their homes to go to a shelter because of COVID-19 concerns, which are likely to increase. We encourage residents to find a trusted source for information; plan where they will go if they are afraid of staying in a shelter; and identify at least two ways to get out of their neighborhood and leave when they feel unsafe. Finally, ensure masks are part of any emergency kit, including hand sanitizers, wipes, and first aid supplies.”
As hurricane season continues, dozens of cities from Florida to Massachusetts rely on Everbridge to keep citizens informed and their employees updated on internal preparations, response, and recovery activities. Among the cities deploying Everbridge are Jacksonville FL; Charleston and Myrtle Beach, SC; Charlotte, NC; Norfolk, VA; Washington, DC; Philadelphia, PA; Hoboken, NJ; and New York City, NY.
“Emergency Management and Public Health officials are working tirelessly around the clock since this pandemic broke out,” said Brian Toolan, Head of Government Strategy at Everbridge. “Everbridge salutes our first responder community and supports their daily mission with a global platform for cities to protect residents and mitigate the impact of multiple crises through the most comprehensive and scalable notification system, reaching diverse populations in multiple languages.”
To bolster Florida’s ongoing hurricane preparedness efforts, the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) uses Everbridge to power AlertFlorida, distributing critical information to residents, businesses and visitors across the state. Video interviews with six Florida counties, as well as the city of Miami, document best practices for ensuring hurricane readiness, the benefits of mutual aid assistance across counties, coordinating safe evacuations for all residents, as well as the many use cases for a scalable mass notification platform.
Everbridge supports population-wide alerting in 11 countries across Europe, Asia, Oceania, The Middle East, Africa, and South America including Australia, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Singapore and Sweden. Everbridge’s population alerting capabilities also power the entire states of California, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Connecticut, and Florida, as well as municipalities, counties and cities within 49 of the 50 United States, within all of Canada’s provinces, and throughout Europe and Asia, including deployments within multiple populous states in India.
About Everbridge
Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG) is a global software company that provides enterprise software applications that automate and accelerate organizations’ operational response to critical events in order to Keep People Safe and Businesses Running™. During public safety threats such as active shooter situations, terrorist attacks or severe weather conditions, as well as critical business events including IT outages, cyber-attacks or other incidents such as product recalls or supply-chain interruptions, over 5,300 global customers rely on the company’s Critical Event Management Platform to quickly and reliably aggregate and assess threat data, locate people at risk and responders able to assist, automate the execution of pre-defined communications processes through the secure delivery to over 100 different communication devices, and track progress on executing response plans. The company’s platform sent over 3.5 billion messages in 2019 and offers the ability to reach over 550 million people in more than 200 countries and territories, including the entire mobile populations on a country-wide scale in Australia, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Sweden, and a number of the largest states in India. The company’s critical communications and enterprise safety applications include Mass Notification, Incident Management, Safety Connection™, IT Alerting, Visual Command Center®, Public Warning, Crisis Management, Community Engagement™ and Secure Messaging. Everbridge serves 8 of the 10 largest U.S. cities, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based investment banks, 47 of the 50 busiest North American airports, 9 of the 10 largest global consulting firms, 8 of the 10 largest global auto makers, all 4 of the largest global accounting firms, 9 of the 10 largest U.S.-based health care providers, and 7 of the 10 largest technology companies in the world. Everbridge is based in Boston and Los Angeles with additional offices in Lansing, San Francisco, Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Bangalore, Kolkata, London, Munich, New York, Oslo, Singapore, Stockholm and Tilburg. For more information, visit www.everbridge.com, read the company blog, and follow on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated opportunity and trends for growth in our critical communications and enterprise safety applications and our overall business, our market opportunity, our expectations regarding sales of our products, our goal to maintain market leadership and extend the markets in which we compete for customers, and anticipated impact on financial results. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and were based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections as well as the beliefs and assumptions of management. Words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “should,” “believe,” “target,” “project,” “goals,” “estimate,” “potential,” “predict,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “intend,” variations of these terms or the negative of these terms and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which involve factors or circumstances that are beyond our control. Our actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including but not limited to: the ability of our products and services to perform as intended and meet our customers’ expectations; our ability to successfully integrate businesses and assets that we may acquire; our ability to attract new customers and retain and increase sales to existing customers; our ability to increase sales of our Mass Notification application and/or ability to increase sales of our other applications; developments in the market for targeted and contextually relevant critical communications or the associated regulatory environment; our estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth may prove to be inaccurate; we have not been profitable on a consistent basis historically and may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future; the lengthy and unpredictable sales cycles for new customers; nature of our business exposes us to inherent liability risks; our ability to attract, integrate and retain qualified personnel; our ability to maintain successful relationships with our channel partners and technology partners; our ability to manage our growth effectively; our ability to respond to competitive pressures; potential liability related to privacy and security of personally identifiable information; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights, and the other risks detailed in our risk factors discussed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including but not limited to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 filed with the SEC on February 28, 2020. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent our views as of the date of this press release. We undertake no intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
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