Norwegian Government strengthens Coronavirus preparedness thanks to Everbridge

The implementation of Everbridge’s Public Warning solution was completed in just nine days and has been instrumental in underpinning countrywide communications during COVID-19. Last week, the Norwegian Directorate for Health sent a record 5.4 million messages to every mobile phone in Norway related to COVID-19. The Directorate for Health also sent a message to all non-Norwegian phones roaming inside the country recently in English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Russian, providing critical instructions for foreign nationals.

Everbridge Public Warning can automatically detect the nationality of a person’s mobile device without the need for any personally identifiable information, and then send messages in the appropriate language to improve the effectiveness of communication to visitors and international travellers. 

Representing Everbridge’s latest country-wide deployment, Norway relies on its Directorate for Health to send critical messages to mobile phones before, during and after an emergency. With Everbridge, the Directorate for Health is able to reach Norway’s five million-plus residents and the country’s even larger number of approximately eight million annual visitors.

The criticality of population alerting has never been more relevant than during the outbreak of COVID-19. Applying the benefits of a single and comprehensive platform enables Everbridge to help protect the most vulnerable by providing special needs registries that work in concert with location-based targeting to mobilise first responders, healthcare providers and volunteers and ‘turn back the clock’ in order to communicate with people who may have previously travelled through a Coronavirus-infected zone – either domestically or internationally – while strictly protecting individual privacy.

“The mobile phone is the best tool for reaching the population and for providing important information about how to act during major incidents,” asserted Javier Colado, head of international business at Everbridge. “The fact that all mobile networks in Norway are now connected to Everbridge's Public Warning solution is a significant step forward and an important part of strengthening Norwegian crisis preparedness for the Coronavirus and other threats posed to public safety.”

Critical updates

The cities of Oslo and Bergen are also leveraging Everbridge to send critical updates on COVID-19 to all phones roaming within city borders with messages related to notification on city limits, ports and airports. Municipalities across the country are making use of the Everbridge system to provide critical updates, general information and a call for volunteers.

The Everbridge solution combines cell broadcast and address, group and location-based multi-channel technologies. The Public Warning platform enables countries to protect against the Coronavirus, share updates on viral hotspots and pandemic Best Practice, co-ordinate first responders and healthcare resources; establish two-way communications with at-risk populations and manage disruptions to transportation, education and other critical services.

Notably, Everbridge recently announced its acquisition of the cell broadcast leader one2many, thereby bringing together the only hybrid public warning system that leverages the speed and network throughput of cell broadcast technology and the reach, population movement analytics, multi-language capability and two-communication of location-based SMS.