Cooper Industry’s Designing for Intelligibility vs. Audibility white paper discusses important design considerations for mass notification systems that provide clear, concise and intelligible voice messages that communicate how people should respond in an emergency.

Excerpt:

From catastrophic natural disasters to the threats our college students face, there has been a heightened demand for Mass Notification Systems (MNS) that provide clear, concise and intelligible voice messages that communicate how people should respond in an emergency. Man-made or natural, the magnitude and diversity of today’s threats have influenced the federal government and other organizations to create regulatory codes for Mass Notification and Emergency Communication Systems, including voice intelligibility requirements for these Life Safety systems to be effective. International, European and North American fire alarm codes now require that voice evacuation systems meet minimum levels of speech intelligibility.

The Evolution of Mass Notification
In 1996, terrorists attacked Khobar Towers, a USAF housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US servicemen and wounding hundreds of others. Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, issued a post-incident report of the attack, which concluded that there was no effective notification system with which to warn personnel. The principal means for sounding an alarm at Khobar Towers consisted of having personnel go from door-to-door throughout an eight-story dormitory, alerting residents of the danger. This primitive approach prompted the U.S. Military to develop force protection standards. Thus in 1999, the US Air Force developed the Antiterrorism Force Protection Standards. To add to the standards, in 2002 the Department of Defense (DoD) created the Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) 4-010-01 Minimum Antiterrorism Standards for Buildings, where mass notification was first >>Read More