Security Director News: Nearly 90 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 years old own a cell phone, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Harnessing the growth in cell phone use by college students is one of the ways the department of public safety here at American University is improving safety on its campus.

At the beginning of the school year, American University began using a cell phone alerting system, which enables students to directly contact campus safety in the case of an incident through a preprogrammed number on their cell phone. To register for this service, students create a user profile that provides campus security with the student’s cell phone number, photograph and other personal information. When campus dispatch receives an alert, they are provided with the student’s profile as well as their location using the cell phone’s GPS capabilities.

This use of cell phones as emergency devices improves the security department’s reaction to incidents, said Michael McNair, director of public safety at American University. “It’s a much better and quicker response to students’ needs,” McNair said. “We get more information by using this service than we would if a person just called us from a cell phone without this capability.”

In addition to responding faster to emergency situations, this service also allows students to request “electronic escorts.” Students can call a second pre-programmed number and record a message informing security that they are walking from the library to their residence hall, for example. The students set a timer and if they do not call back before the time has expired, security will call the cell phone number to check that the student is safe. If there is no verification, security will respond to the incident.

Raju Rishi, founder and chief strategy officer of Rave Wireless, which provides the Rave Guardian product used at American University, said that he has seen a growing demand for this type of inbound alerting technology. Following campus tragedies such as the mass killings at Virginia Tech, security departments around the country rushed to install mass notification systems to alert students of an emergency, but now, he said, departments are looking to use similar technology to receive information from students. “People are moving beyond mass notification technology and looking for more inbound solutions,” Rishi said. “They’re recognizing that for an overall safety solution, you need more than outbound notification, you also need inbound information from individuals in troublesome situations who are requesting help.”

At American University, McNair said more and more students are deploying this service and he expects even further enrollments following an upgrade at the beginning of next semester. The GPS capability will expand from being supported by Sprint Wireless and Nextel to also including AT&T and Verizon Wireless carriers. Rishi said that all cell phones have GPS-locating capabilities, and up to this point it has been a matter of cell phone carriers sharing this information with private companies. He said the process to gain approval from major carriers has been a very rigorous and intense evaluation process.

In addition, the upgrade in the fall will also allow American University students to add medical history to their profile, so security will be aware of allergies or other health conditions.

The response capabilities of this service are not just restricted to the physical campus, said McNair. “We can reach students anywhere that they have a GPS signal and that’s tremendous because students who go into downtown D.C. can also access us,” McNair said. “When they hit the emergency button we can see where they’re located and while we can’t respond in the city, we can call the police department and tell them where they are.”