CrisisGo Delivers Wireless Panic Button System with IoT Gateways from Ezurio

A Worldwide Problem with a Unique Technical Solution

When it comes to safety in an emergency situation, response time is likely the most important factor in mitigating any resulting damage or injury. The time it takes for emergency personnel to respond is often the difference of whether or not there is serious personal harm or even death. Whether it is a medical emergency on a school’s sports field, an active shooter situation, or any other emergency situation that an organization may face, a quick response is critical.

CrisisGo, located in St. Louis, Missouri, is a company that understands safety. The team at CrisisGo believes that safety is a shared responsibility and something to which everyone – no matter what – is entitled. With their cutting-edge safety technology, CrisisGo focuses on building easy-to-use, scalable tools that empower individuals to take an active role in theirs and others’ safety (physical, mental, or cyber) – tools that shorten the distance between seeing something and quickly doing something about it.

CrisisGo offers an extensive suite of safety products and solutions including Safety iPass (assists with a successful return to schools during COVID-19), Safety iBeacon (combines behavior risk assessments and interventions into a single complete system), Safety Check-In (intelligent safety data collection and communication for schools), as well as their unifying digital safety management platform. With this collection of safety technology, CrisisGo helps organizations in a variety of industries improve the safety of their individuals and better connect each organization to its community’s safety network.

To address ongoing (and unfortunately increasing) crisis situations, many states across the United States are issuing mandates that require panic buttons for schools, the hospitality industry, and other commercial businesses. As an example, one of these mandates (Alyssa’s Law) requires that public and secondary schools are equipped with emergency mechanisms that allow a person to manually activate a silent signal to specified support personnel as well as first responders if necessary.

CrisisGo, with its understanding of safety needs, its safety management platform, and its suite of safety tools, was an obvious source to tackle an additional method for improving protection for those in emergency situations. Their goal was to construct an effective panic button system that met the safety needs of schools, hospitality, and other industries. To achieve that, they’d need to provide broad wireless coverage for those devices in the presence of competing wireless networks, such as in-building Wi-Fi, in a package that’s reliable and easy to install without requiring wireless expertise from their customers.

The Solution

To support safety measures, improve emergency response times, and effectively respond to panic button mandates, CrisisGo developed their new safety tool – Safety OneClick. This safety solution provides a wireless panic button system that extends an organization’s emergency plans to any location. A tool such as this can be particularly helpful in situations such as an active shooter scenario or even a medical emergency that takes place on a more remote location such as a school playground or sports field. It enables individuals to activate a silent alarm that sends an immediate notification to the associated safety teams and first responders, if necessary. Using CrisisGo’s safety platform, these safety teams or emergency personnel can initiate the appropriate response protocols including a notification to everyone within the organization that may also be at risk.

The Safety OneClick utilizes the Ezurio Sentrius RG191 LoRaWAN gateway to connect their mission critical IoT panic button to CrisisGo’s emergency communication platform which includes escalation, as needed, to first responders and public safety systems.

Because the physical panic button is a wireless IoT (Internet of Things) device, it required a reliable, stable connection. LoRaWAN technology was the obvious solution for this safety system. Unlike Wi-Fi, LoRaWAN does not drain the panic button’s battery life, nor does it suffer a network lag due to a crowded field of Wi-Fi devices. The RG191 was able to extend LoRaWAN coverage to CrisisGo’s existing panic button, serving as a reliable gateway for a seamless connection to the rest of the emergency system via the cloud. The RG191’s preloaded packet forwarders, compatible with AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN, made it easy to connect the RG191 out-of-the-box for rapid deployment in one of the world’s most trusted cloud networks.