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1. What is the DickinsonALERT service?

The City of Dickinson and Dickinson Office of Emergency Management are pleased to announce a major update and overhaul to our emergency notifications system. This system was formerly known as Connect-CTY provided by Blackboard, and has now been renamed DickinsonALERT, and is now provided by Inspiron Logistics.  This system allows the Dickinson Office of Emergency Management to continue to provide our city-to-residents and city-to-businesses emergency notifications for any incidents or events impacting the City of Dickinson. With this service, Dickinson Office of Emergency Management has the option to send personalized voice, text and email messages to registered residents and businesses within minutes, with specific information about time-sensitive issues related to emergency incidents and events impacting the City of Dickinson.  Along with this, DickinsonALERT now allows registered users to sign-up for NOAA Weather Alerts.  These alerts are sent out automatically by the system when the National Weather Service Houston/Galveston (NWS HGX) issues a Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Tornado Warning, Flash Flood Warning or Special Marine Warning that includes areas within the City of Dickinson.  These warning alerts are location based, and are issued out based on the polygon area selected by the NWS HGX. The DickinsonALERT system will then automatically forward these alerts and associated information out based on the NWS polygon area to any registered users that are within this polygon area. 

Users have the option to sign-up for all NOAA Weather Alerts, but only the Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Tornado Warning, Flash Flood Warning and Special Marine Warning are location based, and are issued out based on the polygon area selected by the NWS HGX. Weather Alerts other than these 4 are based on Galveston County and might not be specific to the City of Dickinson.

***All users should login to their account annually (ideally before the start of June 1st hurricane season) to review and update their contact and location information***  

The DickinsonALERT service will be used to supplement our current communication plans and augment public safety / first responder services. If you have any questions, please email us.

2. How does the service work?

Dickinson Office of Emergency Management will either record a voice message or issue text based messaging that is then delivered quickly to individual registered landline phones, emails and text messages in the notification database. If you have any questions, please email us.

3. What types of messages are sent using this service?

Any message regarding the safety or welfare of our community will be disseminated using the DickinsonALERT service. Examples include severe weather warnings and updates, evacuation notices, hazardous traffic or road conditions inside the city or affecting local routes, or any other situation that could potentially impact the safety, property, or welfare of our citizens and businesses. If you have any questions, please email us.

4. Does the DickinsonALERT service replace other systems that have been used to provide time-sensitive information to residents?

The DickinsonALERT system is a significant enhancement to the existing means of emergency communications and is a supplement to, not a replacement for, the systems used in the past. The call-in emergency information line 281-337-4599, which is activated during an emergency incident, will still be available. Also, TV, radio, social media and the city web site will continue to offer important announcements.

If you have any questions, please email us.

5. Is my telephone number included in the notification database?

It is our goal and hope that every residence and business within our community be included in the DickinsonALERT emergency notifications database. For businesses, we only store one main phone number. For residents, we may have more than one number that belongs to you in the database. Additionally, you may request to have a secondary number be entered into our database for priority calling.

If you have any questions, please email us.

6. May I use a cell phone number as my notification database listing?

Yes, we can accept cell phone numbers in the database and encourage you to list any additional numbers that you may utilize, such as a landline. If you have any questions, please email us.

7. What precautions are being taken to protect personal information?

DickinsonALERT is a service of Inspiron Logistics. Inspiron Logistics takes security and privacy concerns very seriously and does not sell, trade, lease or loan any data about our clients to any third party. From a technical perspective, we utilize multiple physical and virtual layers of firewalls to maintain data security. Inspiron Logistics only utilizes secure transmissions with its customers.

No confidential information is ever transmitted between Inspiron Logistics and its customers using e-mail or FTP, but rather always utilizes either a VPN tunnel or SSL. Data is hosted in state-of-the-art facilities which require photo identification, thumb-print recognition, keyed access, and are manned 24/7 with full-security personnel.

All data is encrypted prior to being placed on tape for offsite storage. Inspiron Logistics also retains an external, independent security firm to perform annual security audits. If you have any questions, please email us.

8. Will there be a way to positively identify incoming calls, texts or emails sent out by the city using the DickinsonALERT system?

In order to avoid overloading call takers during an emergency incident or event, the caller ID number for calls generated by the DickinsonALERT service may be a generic number not associated with any department. This is to avoid a large number of return calls when someone is unable to answer the call sent out.  In addition, every voice message will begin with the same standard announcement: “DickinsonALERT, Hello this is the Dickinson Office of Emergency Management calling with an important message.” Email and Text alerts will begin with DickinsonALERT, followed by the incident information being distributed.  The message content will follow this standard introduction.

If you have any questions, please email us.

9. Will the DickinsonALERT service work if I have a call screening system on my phone?

There are several varieties of call screening devices which use differing protocols for screening. In general, the system has been found to work with these devices; but, some may require some type of reprogramming to allow our city’s system to pass through. We may also conduct periodic tests to assure that messages are being delivered to the numbers in the notification database.

If you have any questions, please email us.

10. If I am a non-resident home or condominium owner, what phone should be listed in the notification database?

For non-residents and owners who reside out of our town / city, you may provide an additional phone number to be included in our database to contact during certain situations. In general, emergency incident / event information calls are sent to the primary number only, but we also have the ability to call multiple numbers for each resident or business when requested by the resident or business. If you have any questions, please email us.