1. Emergency Communications
UI Developers– January 24, 2014
Emergency Communications

2. Introduction
Josh Kaine Senior Application Developer, University Communications and Marketing
Presentation Today
Similar to a presentation in November for ITADmins
Public Side of Emergency/Crisis Communications
Systems, Servers, Process and Code
11/15/2013
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

3. Introduction (cont) Stakeholder Group Project Team Chris Pruess, ITS
Dave Visin, Public Safety
Steve Pradarelli, University Communications and Marketing
Project Team
Bill Bacher, ITS
Hugh Brown, ITS
Rick Porter, ITS
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

4. Stages of Crisis Communication
Initial alert
Ongoing (in-crisis) updates
Crisis event ended/resolved
Follow up communications
Return to regular business
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

5. Business Needs
Process and technology to support communications at each stage of a crisis event
Ability for UI staff from multiple departments to assume the primary communications role at different points during a crisis event.
There exists no vended solution that meets all these business needs, and so we’ve connected several systems together.
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

6. Crisis Communication Tech Timeline
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

7. Content Flow: Systems & Server map
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

8. Emergency Info Site http://e.uiowa.edu/ http://emergency.uiowa.edu/
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

9. Developer Tech Drupal HTML 5 XML JSON(P) VCL (Varnish Control Layer)
PHP, Apache, MySQL, Linux
HTML 5
HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery
XML
Generic, RSS,CAP
JSON(P)
VCL (Varnish Control Layer)
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

10. Drupal Produce HTML and Data Feeds
Consume the RSS feed from BlackboardConnect
CMS or Programming Framework?
Other Peoples’ Code
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

11. HTML5 HTML – Rendered by Drupal; usually very clean
CSS – 90% of display customization is done here
Javascript – JQuery fully integrated; very easy to add your own
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

12. XML
Drupal7 renders pretty decent XML; structure can be limited; XML is not always escaped correctly.
RSS and CAP are specific XML formats; required some custom PHP coding to get rendered correctly
XML is a mature standard. Consumption of XML, however, is still an evolving area.
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

13. JSON(P) JSON: JavaScript Object Notation JSONP: JSON… with Padding
Used to get around “Same Origin Policy”; basically a hack to allow sharing of data across domains
Drupal produces pretty good JSON and JSONP; similar issues to XML with depth and consistent escaping of characters
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

14. VCL (Varnish Control Layer)
A custom “language” for defining Varnish caching behaviors
More than an API; uses an XML-esque structure
Enables very granular customization of HTTP header content in both directions– to the browser and to the server
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

15. Consuming Notifications
Hawk Alert RSS vs. Emergency Info feeds
If you have a use-case for displaying emergency notifications, contact me directly
Format agnostic: We’ll try to build a feed (push or pull) to meet your use-case needs
9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing

16. Questions and Contact Questions? joshua-kaine@uiowa.edu 9/22/2018
Josh Kaine - University Communications and Marketing