Citizen Alerting System Now Operational in Hamilton County, OH

Federal Signal SmartMsg(TM) emergency notification system enables county to alert two million citizens across nine counties in three states by phone, email, text or page.

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Federal Signal Corporation

Feb 01, 2010, 09:00 ET

UNIVERSITY PARK, Ill., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE: FSS) announces that Hamilton County, OH has deployed its SmartMsg™ citizen alerting emergency notification system. The system allows local county officials to quickly notify by telephone, email, text or page citizens and businesses in geographically targeted locations. The citizen notification system will be employed for a wide variety of emergencies, including natural disasters, missing-child alerts or public safety emergencies.

During a January 14, 2010 press conference to introduce the system, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory stated: "We are going to be able to communicate directly with citizens in emergency situations in a much more coordinated and strategic manner. The new system is a great example of using innovative technology to keep our community safe."

"This program allows us to quickly target and rapidly disseminate life-saving notifications," added County Commissioner David Pepper. Elaborating further, Pepper explained that citizens will have the option of choosing home phone, cell phone, text message, email, fax or page as their preferred means of contact, but noted that Hamilton County and City of Cincinnati citizens will still receive emergency notices through home phone numbers whether or not they sign up for the additional free services. According to Michael Snowden, EMA Director, becoming a participating subscriber of the alert system is a simple matter of accessing the county website.

"Federal Signal's SmartMsg Notification system quickly delivers messages to recipients," said John Von Thaden, General Manager for Alerting & Notification Systems, a unit of Federal Signal. "We are excited to partner with Hamilton County and the City of Cincinnati to help insure they can effectively communicate with their citizens."

Federal Signal's SmartMsg citizen alerting system offers public, industrial and campus safety leaders a robust means to provide mass alert notification to citizens and employees virtually anytime, anywhere, and on most devices. Proper warning and instructions enable citizens to take action to better protect themselves during natural or man-made disasters. Citizens may also opt-in to receive timely alerts during non-emergency events. The SmartMsg system supports the ability to send alerts to targeted subgroups and specific geographic locations as well as to the entire register or recipients in the system.

The software based SmartMsg system includes alert templates, alert forwarding, and audio creation/attachment capabilities that help define specific courses of action for various situations. Emergency managers and first responders can initiate an alert from virtually anywhere there is a network or connection. End users can select their own internal outbound channels for SMS messaging, SMTP alerting and phone dialing.

Alerting & Notification Systems is a leader in the design and deployment of fully redundant and integrated mass notification systems. These systems include indoor, outdoor and personal alerting devices. These mission-critical communications systems from Federal Signal are deployed in hundreds of implementations in countries, states, counties and cities around the world.

About Federal Signal

Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE: FSS – News) enhances the safety, security and well-being of communities and workplaces around the world. Founded in 1901, Federal Signal is a leading global designer and manufacturer of products and total solutions that serve municipal, governmental, industrial and institutional customers. Headquartered in Oak Brook, Ill., with manufacturing facilities worldwide, the Company operates three groups: Safety and Security Systems, Environmental Solutions and Fire Rescue. For more information on Federal Signal, visit: http://www.federalsignal.com.

SOURCE Federal Signal Corporation