ELERTS develops emergency-alert smartphone, tablet apps

ELERTS has introduced a two-way mobile communication app that delivers critical information gathered from official sources and eyewitness reports. The crowd-sourced smartphone platform app is available immediately at the iPhone/iPad App Store and via the Android Market.

ELERTS lets users:

• Choose alert feeds by type (earthquake, fire, flood, power outage, vehicle accidents, suspicious activity, and more) and location (any city/town, college or university)

• Contribute eyewitness reports with photos, descriptions and GPS location
• Message friends and family with location and safety status during a crisis.

ELERTS draws its emergency intelligence from a growing portfolio of local and federal organizations, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Red Cross, Ready.gov, and Alaska and Pacific Tsunami Centers.

In addition to providing notification feeds, ELERTS facilitates two-way emergency communications with:

• ELERTS 1Rs, a volunteer network of public-safety and first-responder experts who review and rank crowd-sourced reports for accuracy and severity
• Social-network propagation, sharing major reports via Twitter and Facebook among a national network of first responders/organizations

• ELERTS Management Console, a dashboard-like command center that provides public-safety organizations with the ability to gather, analyze and distribute emergency information before, during and after an emergency event.