OLYMPIA, Wash., USA– The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) announced that the statewide Critical Incident Planning and Mapping System (CIPMS) is now protecting nearly 2,000 public K-12 schools in the State of Washington. The CIPMS is also protecting 18 of the state’s 35 community colleges. The statewide system provides police, fire, school officials and other first responders with secure and instant access to critical campus information including site and floor plans, aerial and geospatial (GIS) imagery, hazardous material locations, emergency response plans, digital images both inside and outside the school, and evacuation routes via a computer. WASPC has also worked to bring emergency responders together with facility officials at each mapped site to pre-plan how they will respond to emergencies at each campus.
Following a 2001 pilot programme, the Washington State Legislature in 2003 passed a bill that delegated WASPC the responsibility to create and operate a statewide Critical Incident Planning and Mapping System to protect schools. The programme has since been expanded to protect other public facilities and infrastructure in the state. The CIPMS promotes pre-event collaboration between school officials and first responders and then leverages technology to provide them with quick access to site-specific information during an emergency.
The technology behind the CIPMS, Prepared Response Inc’s Rapid Responder(R) crisis management system, has been certified as a “Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology” through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s SAFETY Act program and is endorsed by the National Sheriffs’ Association. The State of Washington has received the Harvard/Noblis Innovations Award in Homeland Security for the program. Rapid Responder protects nearly 15,000 school and other critical infrastructure facilities in 15 states and is used by more than 600 public safety agencies.
