Case Study: Northeastern University achieves faster incident response and enhanced campus safety with CriticalArc's SafeZone

Northeastern University - Customer Case Study

Northeastern University, which serves nearly 28,000 students, faculty and staff across a central Boston campus and regional sites, needed a way to improve personal safety, incident prevention and coordination between its Northeastern Police Department (NUPD) and contracted security teams. CriticalArc was engaged in 2016 to deploy its SafeZone mobile and web-enabled safety platform—a solution NUPD’s Todd Kaplan (Associate Director and Emergency Manager) adopted to give anyone the ability to raise alerts and increase situational awareness across campus.

CriticalArc’s SafeZone, integrated with the OmniGuard responder app and NUPD’s control center, provides real-time alerting, responder locations, heat‑mapping of patrol coverage, and rapid geo-fencing for events like NU’s TD Garden graduation ceremonies; it’s also used as a mobile alternative to hard-wired panic buttons and is being trialed with BLE beacons for indoor positioning. The deployment eliminated dispatch delays, improved responder situational awareness and asset mapping, and — according to SafeZone reporting — has reduced response times by up to 50%, delivering measurable improvements in campus safety.

Northeastern University

Todd Kaplan

Associate Director and Emergency Manager