Case Study: Virginia Beach achieves timely, targeted emergency alerts for festival attendees with Rave Mobile Safety

Rave Alert’s™ SMS Opt-In Helps Virginia Beach Notify Festival Attendees

Virginia Beach faced a high-stakes communications challenge for the inaugural Something in the Water festival — a sold-out event with 35,000 tickets amid a city that hosts around 19 million visitors annually and 440,000 residents. To reach temporary attendees who might not be subscribed to its regular alerts, the city partnered with Rave Mobile Safety and deployed Rave Alert (branded locally as VBAlert) to provide a dynamic, event-specific notification option.

Rave Mobile Safety implemented Rave Alert’s SMS opt‑in short code with time-limited subscriptions, enabling officials to send tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings, road-closure and parking advisories, and on-the-go alerts from mobile devices. The system also supported post-event polling (about 1,700 responses in 12 hours) and robust reporting, helping Virginia Beach improve situational awareness and refine planning for future events.

Virginia Beach

Stephen Williams

Dir of Emergency Communication & Citizen Services