A few weeks ago, a second report analyzing the tragedy at Virginia Tech was released. This time, it was an external group of reviewers, as outlined in this FacilitiesNet news article.

Much of the controversy around the incident deals with the notification of students and staff about what was happening — or lack thereof. In an ironic case of bad timing, Virginia Tech was in the process of upgrading their mass notification system, the report finds.

The system that was being put in place took a multi-tiered approach to emergency notification. Today, with the profusion of cell phones, PDAs, laptops and wifi connectivity, mass notification systems have numerous communications channels open to them, as this recent BOM article points out.

These high-tech channels are outlined in an appendix of the report. Virginia Tech Guidelines for Choosing Alerting System explains that a successful system would provide multi-modal communications in text messaging (SMS), instant messaging, e-mail, Web posting and voice communications (voicemails, prerecorded messages).

In addition to the multiple high-tech recommendations, Virginia Tech had in place or was installing more traditional means of communications, including long-range loudspeakers and a network of staff with bullhorns, literally.

With these new lines of communication come potential problems, though. The report advises that data centers and points of broadcast be distributed so the whole system can’t go down and messaging be dispersed in order to avoid network overload and outages.