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Introducing Blue Alert Overwatch™, The Newest Active Presence™ Solution from Code Blue®
For school sporting event safety, when seconds matter, Blue Alert Overwatch can help deter bad actors from using guns, alert response teams to the visible presence of a gun and enable officials to give timely direction to those in attendance. These bundled capabilities in a single package from Code Blue help deliver a higher standard of care to stadiums and other outdoor gathering spaces.
Background
David Riedman is founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database, a project he started over six years ago to cover comprehensive information (dating back to 1966) about school shootings. According to Mr. Riedman, historically, over 70% of incidents have occurred outdoors on school property. A majority of those happened in parking lots, and sporting venue incidents are on the rise. Given Code Blue’s mission to deliver a higher standard of care, we developed Blue Alert Overwatch, specifically to help school safety and security stakeholders actively monitor, detect, confirm, and act on gun related threats at school sporting events.
Introduction to Blue Alert Overwatch™
Available today, Code Blue is releasing for sale its latest product called Blue Alert Overwatch. Blue Alert Overwatch is part of a growing suite of Blue Alert® products that incorporates Code Blue’s iconic blue light towers with innovative video gun detection analytics, gunshot audio analytics, emergency communications capabilities, audio paging and a wide range of proven automated response, calling and public address capabilities.
Blue Alert Overwatch is purpose-built for the campus market and can help improve your site safety and security plan for sporting venues. Furthermore, Overwatch is a bundled, native machine learning cloud software platform that can integrate with your existing campus management systems. This solution comes in a single package designed to be scalable for the addition of supplemental cameras based on each site’s needs. Using Code Blue’s secure cellular IP system means there is no need to deal with the added complexity of edge devices or compromising your existing campus IT network.
Simply put, Overwatch is designed to help be an effective, and affordable safety enhancement for sporting events on your campus, as well as a variety of other use cases.
Overwatch is a part of the Code Blue Active Presence™ Ecosystem
Code Blue is expanding its communications platform to bring Active Presence to public spaces. By adding sensors to monitor open spaces and applying machine learning software to digitally detect anomalies, preemptive alerts and automated responses can be generated. The ultimate goal of the Code Blue Active Presence ecosystem is to convey a real connection to people in the space that they are safe, they can get assistance, and they are an important part of public safety initiatives. For intruders considering criminal activity, the Code Blue Active Presence ecosystem conveys to them that they are being monitored – so they think twice before acting.
Overwatch is a Bundled Solution
Blue Alert Overwatch dramatically extends the value of Code Blue’s blue light towers for deterrence, public mobility, public safety, and intelligent response at campus sporting events. A typical high school stadium venue might only require one to three towers. Viewing coverage can be supplemented with additional stand-alone cameras. Each tower is enabled with Code Blue’s software analytics for video gun detention and audio gunshot detection. Responses can include a combination blue light beacon/strobe, amplified and intelligible PA speakers, two-way speaker phones, and faceplate cameras. Most existing security cameras in a stadium area can be readily integrated, and new cameras can be added where needed. Blue Alert Overwatch was designed to be camera agnostic to support campus preferences and standardization.
An example layout is shown below – in this case it shows two towers – one in the entry plaza and one in the parking area.
Code Blue Technology
Code Blue is leveraging its public safety expertise and technology integration capabilities (software, hardware, services), to develop the machine learning capabilities of this system specifically for this event safety application, and as a part of Active Presence. Code Blue’s ongoing development ensures that Blue Alert Overwatch will continuously be refined to meet our performance and affordability standards.
Blue Alert Overwatch – Value Summary
- Blue Alert Overwatch offers high schools and colleges access to detection and general confirmation of gun related breaches at sporting events through advanced visual and audio analytics, while expanding immediate communications and response capabilities though Code Blue Help Point® towers.
- Our goal is to be affordable to any school that wants the technology and to be scalable and attractive to our established customers.
- As with most Code Blue solutions, Blue Alert Overwatch integrates with common campus and site management systems.
- Most schools are now implementing emergency response plans with automated and free-form public address announcements. Blue Alert Overwatch is equipped with highly intelligible audio paging speakers (public address) with a maximized range of sound projection.
- Code Blue towers equipped with audio paging can also be used for non-emergency announcements in the immediate area of the stadium for track meets and other gatherings.
- Blue Alert Overwatch will be a welcome addition for colleagues in school admissions and administration departments.
- Blue Alert Overwatch is a pre-configured and bundled solution, so procurement, installation and commissioning of the system is simplified.
We hope you agree that Blue Alert Overwatch can help be an effective and affordable public safety enhancement for sporting events on education campus sites. Please consider contacting Code Blue for help (https://codeblue.com/overwatch/) to make your Blue Alert Overwatch Solution come to life.