In an unprecedented partnership, the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) in Plaquemine, Louisiana and Bell South are using mapping to help protect their citizens. After receiving court-approved permission to provide their 911 telephone number database to the OEP, Bell South has made it possible for city officials to notify all of their citizens, including those with unlisted telephone numbers, in case of an emergency. Using an automated notification program written by MapInfo Partner, On Target Mapping, in tandem with an automated dialing program called The Communicator!™ written by Dialogic Communications Corporation of Franklin, Tennessee, the manual call trees and global paging systems that would accompany emergency situations in the past have been replaced by PC and a touch-tone phone.
The Communicator! contacts fire, police, and communities and populations at risk during an emergency by instantly dialing the numbers of all of the telephones, faxes and pagers in an area and, using a recorded message, providing directions on how to proceed.
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