Natural disasters, such as earthquakes or hurricanes, can bring about an all too familiar problem for central stations: excessive alarm activity. In the wake of a natural disaster, central stations are typically inundated with a large volume of alarms, geographically concentrated and stemming from low priority signals (such as power failure or low battery) to high priority signals (such as fire and burglar). Although excessive alarm activity can be caused by events beyond your control, you can take charge in handling excessive alarm activity in emergency situations. The Auto Clear feature is a powerful tool designed to moderate excessive alarm activity by automatically reprioritizing, delaying, and even clearing (fully or partially) alarms based on specifications.
With the Auto Clear feature, multiple customizable profiles can be created that can be saved and activated when needed. Within each profile, the date and time range in which the profile remains active can be set. Each profile also allows for the ability to determine the service company, the site types, zip codes, and other criteria to associate with the profile. Alarms that match the criteria defined in the profile are qualified to be handled by the Auto Clear feature. How MASterMind Monitoring application handles qualified alarms depends on the rules defined within the profile.
Rules defined for the Auto Clear feature determine how qualified alarms are automatically processed by MASterMind Monitoring application. When MASterMind Monitoring application receives a qualifying alarm, the Auto Clear feature can be set to reprioritize, delay, or fully clear the alarm. Although multiple rules in a single profile can be defined, only one rule is applied to a qualifying alarm and the rule with the most distinct matches take precedence.
The Auto Clear process runs without user intervention. When a profile is defined and enabled, that profile continues to be applied to new inbound alarms in addition to the existing ones at the time the profile is enabled. For central stations, an emergency event does not have to disrupt normal operations when dealing with excessive alarm activity. With well-defined Auto Clear profiles in place and activated, MASterMind Monitoring application can automatically handle specified alarms, leaving more room to allocate resources for real emergencies.
* The Auto Clear feature is part of MASterMind Monitoring application. Contact your MAS Sales Representative for more information about the software and hardware requirements to support these features if they are not already available to you.