Case Study: University of South Florida keeps more than 66,000 community members safe during severe weather with Rave Mobile Safety's Rave Alert

University of South Florida Keeps More Than 66,000 Community Members Safe During Severe Weather Through Rave Alert™

The University of South Florida, a Tampa Bay–area campus community of about 51,000 students and 15,000 faculty/staff (more than 66,000 people total), faced the recurring challenge of rapidly evolving severe weather—tornadoes, hurricanes and frequent lightning—with typical tornado warning lead times of only about 13 minutes. USF needed a reliable, fast and targeted mass-notification capability rather than broad county alerts, so it worked with Rave Mobile Safety and deployed the Rave Alert system.

Rave Mobile Safety implemented Rave Alert’s automated, polygon-based weather integration (reading NWS coordinates) and multi-channel delivery—text messages, digital signage, desktop alerts and the university website—plus quick-send templates like SnapSend. The automation sent tornado warnings to affected campuses in about two minutes (approximately 2,500 people in Sarasota, 6,000 in St. Petersburg and 58,000 in Tampa during 2018 incidents), reduced staff workload to "zero work" for initial alerts, cut alert fatigue by geo-targeting messages, and has been used for dozens of emergency notifications each year.

University of South Florida

Christopher Akin

Associate Director for IT