MD OF BIGHORN – The Municipal District of Bighorn will transition to a new emergency alert system this year in order to provide better features for reporting events to urban and rural residents.
Previously, the MD had been using the Regroup emergency alert notification system but will now transition to Voyent Alert.
Voyent Alert will allow the MD to directly notify residents based on their location. At sign-up, users will see a map and can place pins to identify their important locations in the MD such as home, school and work. Alerts will then be sent to include that specific area without notifying all users in the MD.
The Regroup system will stay in place during the transition to Voyent. As there is no data sharing between the apps, residents will have to sign up through the new app once the transition is finished.
“We are starting through the process of this new notification program,” said MD environmental fieldman Kendra Tippe. “With moving into Chief Lyster’s retirement and into the summer season when staff are busy, we didn’t want to be without a notification system.”
Voyent Alert offers several features including tracking multiple locations, personalized communications and a wide variety of alert channels including voice calling, text alerting and app notifications.
“Voyent Alert has the ability to notify for emergencies, street sweeping, community events, road closures, things like that,” Tippe said. “It has the ability to do it all.”
The transition to the new system won’t begin until at least the fall, with the emergency aspect of the alert system being the focus initially.
“We left it kind of open because we were not sure if fall would be the time it would occur,” Bighorn CAO Robert Ellis said. “Emergency is the section we want to move forward with first.”
It is expected the entire system will be in place by late-2022.
“We haven’t pulled the trigger yet,” Tippe said. “Once we discuss and decide how to switch people over, we will explain what that looks like.”
Later in the year, council will further explain the transition and what MD residents need to do, through its newsletter.
