Benzinga | Mar 5, 2021 07:34AM EST

Everbridge Announces PAtent For ITs Public Warnings System

Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ:EVBG), the global leader in critical event management (CEM), today announced the company received a revolutionary new patent related to its world-class Public Warning system. The patent pertains to technology focused on hybrid population alerting systems and intelligent sending of messages in public mobile networks.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210305005260/en/

Everbridge Awarded Revolutionary New Public Warning Patent (Photo: Business Wire)

Everbridge represents the first population alerting provider to serve the entire populations of 11 countries in Europe, Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, supporting five European Union (EU) countries in conjunction with the EU mandate requiring member countries to have a population-wide alerting system in place by June 2022. In compliance with GDPR, Everbridge Public Warning neither collects nor stores personally identifiable information (PII) data.

The new patent entitled "Intelligent Messaging-Channel Selection and Related Features For Alert Systems" covers functionality around efficient and optimized sending of mass notifications to the public, and the automatic selection of channels to be used, to ensure emergency notifications are sent to as many hyper-targeted populations, whether resident or traveler, as fast as possible, leaving no one behind during a crisis.

"Through the strategic combination of leading technologies in the industry, we are yielding intellectual property that would otherwise not have been possible," said Imad Mouline, Chief Technology Officer at Everbridge, referring to Everbridge's 2018 acquisition of UMS and 2020 acquisition of one2many. "This patent represents a key part of our strategy to continue to offer the next-generation of public warning technology. Everbridge enables governments and entire countries to leverage a single platform to communicate during all stages of a crisis, and to all stakeholders, by leveraging automation that ensures the right communications channels are used for the right purposes, leaving no one behind in an emergency."

When executing large-scale population alerting, some channels will have better reach but can be slower and result in the need for more time to get all notifications delivered. Other channels might reach a smaller percentage of the population but can disseminate an alert extremely fast. The methodology described in the new Everbridge patent will automatically make a decision on which dissemination channel to use, based on the individual use case, the real-time status of the communication networks, and various demographic and technical characteristics of the intended recipients. The Everbridge Public Warning platform will select whether to use SMS or Cell Broadcast, or when to use a hybrid model of each, to reach the right segment of the population, in the right area, at the right time.

The patent also describes estimation algorithms to calculate the time it will take to send out all messages with the different channels available in the system (based on dissemination channel technology, what generation of mobile network used, and congestion measurements).

In some cases, for example, a system based on the methodology in this patent, will start sending messages on one dissemination channel, and then later automatically switch to other channels for 'whole area' or to 'certain mobile cell towers' in an area in order to maximize reach.

"If you are aware of approaching severe weather," said Morten Seliussen, Senior Director of Engineering at Everbridge, "it becomes imperative to prepare emergency alerts and notifications based on where people live or where they work, versus where they are right now. Similarly, if you have a missing person or virus hot spot, the location where people are right now is not always as important as where they were at the time of a certain event, or who had passed through an impact area. With this innovation, we have the ability to go back in time using very unique underlying technologies and techniques to deliver the most effective and targeted mass notification to the most relevant population."

Continuing its market-leading innovation in population alerting technologies, Everbridge was also recently awarded a new patent for end-to-end multimedia population alerting capabilities, highlighting the need for delivering alerts through a combination of 5G, cell broadcast, and multimedia.

More local, state, and national governments across the globe deploy the Everbridge Platform than any other solution, offering the ability to reach over 700 million people in more than 200 countries. Everbridge represents the first population alerting provider to support five European Union (EU) countries in conjunction with the EU mandate requiring member countries to have a population-wide alerting system in place by June 2022. Everbridge supports population-wide alerting in countries across Europe, Asia, Oceania, The Middle East, Africa, and South America including Australia, Greece, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Singapore and Sweden. Everbridge's population alerting capabilities also power some of the most populous states in North America including Florida, New York, and California, as well as over 3,700 municipalities, counties and cities within 49 of the 50 United States, within all of Canada's provinces, and throughout Europe and Asia, including deployments within multiple populous states in India.