Australian Universities Use Safezone to Protect Students and Staff

Three leading Australian universities are introducing Safezone technology from CriticalArc to their campuses in a drive to improve safety, increase their security teams’ capabilities and provide better care for students and staff.

For more safety - on and off campus
Safezone puts individuals directly in touch with response teams at universities, hospitals, government departments and similar large organisations, making it easy for them to use their mobile phones to request help, trigger an emergency response, receive rapid notifications in the event of emergencies and benefit from a wide range of customer-care services.

The technology also lets students and staff share their situation with response team members by checking-in when working alone outside hours or in higher-risk environments such as laboratories and workshops.

With the ability to ‘geo-fence’ any location, each of the universities’ security teams can now monitor care and safety of users wherever they are – including those working out-of-hours on campus, those travelling between campuses locally or on field projects, or travelling overseas for study or research placements.

Protecting students all across the world
With 30% of Australian universities now using Safezone, this latest wave of roll-outs confirms CriticalArc’s position as the most comprehensive safety and security management solution provider in the Australian market.

The University of Tasmania, the University of Southern Queensland and the University of the Sunshine Coast have more than 75,000 students and staff working in 33 campuses and associated facilities across four States. This means that Safezone now serves the needs of 1.5 million students and staff at more than 500 locations across the world.

A campus where everyone can feel safe and welcome
‘UTAS, USQ and USC each have their own unique character and particular priorities but ensuring the best standards of care for students and staff is top of the list for all of them’, says Robert Christie, CriticalArc’s Customer Success Manager, Asia Pacific.

‘Preventing crime, managing public safety and handling emergencies are still the top concerns of university security teams, yet Safezone is also enabling those teams do much more to address issues that are increasingly important. From improving support around mental well-being to tackling sexual harassment and making campuses inclusive environments where everyone can feel safe and welcome, security and response teams are playing a much bigger role than they traditionally did. Safezone is a key tool in enabling campus security to be more effective, more relevant and more approachable.’

With its global reach combined with its ability to precisely locate vulnerable individuals, Safezone is helping universities around the world to better meet their duty of care obligations, says Darren Chalmers-Stevens, CriticalArc, Managing Director.

Chalmers-Stevens added: ‘Safezone offers all the functions that university teams want, in one easy package. It is not only helping them to deliver better care, it is letting them demonstrate this fact in an accountable way.’