How To Create A Crisis Management Plan Using Digital Twins
No one wants to plan for the worst—which is what could keep some education administrators and school board members from planning for emergencies.
But planning for the worst while hoping for the best is the best policy to ensure school safety. Unfortunately, the number of violent incidents in schools is on the rise. We’ve all read the headlines about the increase in active shootings in U.S. schools. One out of five students in California was sent home at least once a year due to a natural disaster, threat of a shooting, or another type of emergency. These incidents underscore the need for a robust, all-encompassing emergency plan.
While many schools have some written policies in place (for example, 94% of public schools had written procedures for natural disasters in the 2022-2023 school year), students and staff can face a variety of incidents that require a response to ensure their safety and minimize harm. That’s where a crisis management plan for schools can help.
What are crisis management plans for schools?
A crisis management plan comprehensively documents the steps school officials can take to anticipate, respond to, and recover after unforeseen crisis situations. This plan includes protocols to address a wide variety of incidents, from violence to natural disasters to medical emergencies.
Why schools need a crisis management plan in place
While school administrators can’t plan for every scenario they may encounter, a crisis management plan is a proactive way to help staff and students respond appropriately to emergencies.
A comprehensive plan is easy to reference ahead of incidents and can quell the chaos that follows in the wake of an unexpected incident. But a school crisis management plan offers a wealth of other advantages, including:
Ensuring a safe school climate
When an emergency arises, a delayed or bungled response can endanger the safety of more school staff and students. For example, not breaking up a student-on-student fight immediately could lead to more students—or even educators—being injured or pulled into a fight.
However, a school crisis management plan dictates how to respond to different scenarios appropriately. The right emergency response at the right time can ensure administrators keep students and staff safe while dealing with the incident quickly.
Reducing panic
During an emergency, it’s easy to get swept up in the chaos of the situation. If students don’t know where to go during a bomb threat, hundreds of kids could panic and run for the same exit—which could lead to injuries.
But a proactive plan and effective communication can stop panicked reactions in their tracks. When creating a school crisis management plan, administrators can collaborate to assign crucial roles and responsibilities for emergencies, identify evacuation routes, create a schedule of safety drills for students, and build contingency plans in case situations escalate.
When staff, students, and members of the surrounding community know how to respond to a crisis, it’s less likely panic will set in and create additional chaos.
Facilitating communication
A crisis management plan outlines how school officials should communicate during and after an emergency to parents, students, and the community. The plan serves as a centralized reference that dictates how (and to whom) administrators will disseminate information in a variety of situations.
A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) training manual dedicates an entire chapter to how crucial communication is in an emergency. According to the manual, “Information is as critically important to people as food or water. Not only can accurate information mean the difference between life and death, it can provide reassurance that response and recovery are truly underway.”
In your plan, detail which members of your crisis response team will share emergency info, when, and where. Let’s say you designate the district superintendent as the lead communicator. In this case, the superintendent would distribute info on an emergency incident and field questions from students, parents, educators, and the community.
When creating a crisis management plan, consider outlining the appropriate ways to communicate an incident’s details across a variety of mediums like:
Warnings and alerts (emails, SMS messages, automated phone calls, a phone tree, messages over school intercoms)
Posted documentation with evacuation routes and instructions
Instructions for safety drills for students (for fires, earthquakes, violent incidents, etc.)
Response messaging for family, first responders, and the community during and following an incident
Instructions for students to follow in an emergency based on grade levels (the crisis response designee wouldn’t give the same kind of instructions to students in high school as they would to kids in middle school)
To facilitate quick and accurate communications for crisis events, administrators can also include message templates for different incidents in their crisis management plan. For example, Wakulla Public Schools included sample messages for serious accidents, letters to parents about the death of a student, and suggested language for discussing suicide.
Protecting a school’s reputation
A crisis management plan can help administrators identify potential risks with an audit and provide the most effective response when an emergency inevitably arises. As a result, crisis plans can help safeguard both their staff and students and the school’s reputation.
A school and district’s reputation matters because it affects enrollment, funding, and the quality of educators and administrators who apply for open roles. Maintaining a positive reputation means being proactive about planning and building trust; creating a crisis communication plan; transparently communicating with parents, students, and the community; providing training for staff and drills for students; and ensuring compliance with insurance requirements and safety protocols. And creating and implementing a crisis management plan can help you tick off all those critical tasks.
Most common school crisis scenarios
Schools can experience several crises, and each category requires its own preparation protocols and responses. Understanding the most common categories of incidents can help administrators create an effective crisis management plan and prepare appropriately.
Natural disasters
Many regions are experiencing more instances of severe weather, from tornadoes to flooding to earthquakes to forest fires. Any natural disaster can impact schools via structural damage or endanger anyone in the building when they strike—school staff, administrators, and children alike.
A well-thought-out crisis management plan can address what to do ahead of inclement weather to prepare (monthly tornado drills, for example) and how to respond after a natural disaster has passed (such as emotional support services for students after a traumatic event).
Violent incidents
Unfortunately, violent incidents are on the rise in U.S. public schools. One recent study showed that about two-thirds (67%) of schools experienced at least one violent incident during the 2021-2022 school year.
While this category includes the heartbreaking rise in active school shootings, it also covers assaults, fights between students or staff, hate crimes, and severe bullying.
Preparing a crisis management plan can help you establish crucial steps to take before, during, and after an incident.
Medical emergencies
Accidents and unexpected medical issues sometimes happen when school is in session. These can range from a fall on the playground to allergic reactions to severe sickness to mental health emergencies.
While it’s impossible to predict every accident, having a clear response plan in place ensures sick or injured students or staff members can get prompt medical attention. That includes having immediate access to first-aid supplies, ensuring staff members are trained in CPR and first-aid measures, and designating clear entry and exit points for emergency responders.
Cybersecurity threats
Hackers don’t just attack businesses—plenty of schools are victims of cyberattacks and data breaches as well. Schools at all levels regularly face phishing scams, viruses, spyware/malware, and account hacking.
For example, in 2023, hackers hit the Minneapolis Public Schools district with a devastating cyberattack where hackers stole sensitive data with personally identifiable information (PII) about students (like Social Security numbers and info on sexual assaults and psychiatric holds). When the district refused to pay any ransom, the hackers released this sensitive student data online.
As part of a school crisis management plan, district officials and administrators can assess their current cybersecurity tools and strategies to identify gaps. Review the American Association of School Administrators’ (AASA’s) list of school cybersecurity resources to prevent and react to such attacks.
Examples of crisis management plans used in schools
A tool like Matterport can help administrators and school boards collaborate and create a highly detailed (and high-tech) crisis management plan. Matterport makes it easy to capture a digital twin—a three-dimensional virtual version—of any campus.
Once that digital twin is captured, administrators can leverage it to create government-compliant, cloud-based resources and training as part of their crisis management plan. For example, with a digital twin, you can:
export schematic floor plans of all school buildings to determine traffic flow
navigate a 3D virtual tour to plan emergency routes and response strategies
leverage dollhouse views of your school to train employees on evacuation routes and other safety protocol
share your floor plans or 3D digital twin with first responders to provide full visibility into access points and internal structures in and around the property
add important notes about safety features, linked documentation, and training materials right in the virtual tour via Mattertags
8 steps to creating your school’s crisis management plan with Matterport
While a crisis management plan for schools has a lot of moving parts, collaborating with all the relevant stakeholders and leveraging the right tools can make the process seamless. Although every crisis management plan will be unique to the school and district, they all have a few common components:
1. Assess current emergency preparedness
To get your crisis management plan started on the right foot, perform a comprehensive audit of current safety measures and potential risks.
Review any documented plans the school has in place for any type of emergency to see what gaps exist. Then perform a full risk assessment to identify potential hazards to the safety, security, or well-being of students and staff.
For example, McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, identifies three potential risk categories in its crisis management plan, including a nearby nuclear reactor.
When performing your risk audit, review protocols around common risk factors like:
Blocked or poor signage for fire exits
Out-of-order fire alarms, sprinkler systems, or expired extinguishers
Firing procedures
Lack of training around bullying and other student misconduct
Lapsed or insufficient insurance policies
Irregular safety drills
Ridesharing for students
Drones on school property
A Matterport digital twin can speed up the process of identifying potential risks around campus. For example, a three-dimensional replica of your school makes it simple to do a virtual walkthrough of an entire property to assess the placement of safety equipment, determine whether there’s adequate signage posted, and inspect fire exits.
2. Identify key stakeholders
In this section, you’ll outline all the people who will: 1) be impacted by your crisis management plan, and 2) be part of your crisis response team.
Your list of key stakeholders will include:
Administrators
Staff and faculty
Students
Parents
Board of education members
State department of education
Facility managers and maintenance staff
First responders (fire, EMS, etc.)
Local medical professionals (such as the nearest hospital)
Members of the surrounding community
Next, you’ll identify the members of your response team and their roles and responsibilities. You can build teams that tackle different aspects of crisis planning—for example, an emergency communications team and a recovery team—or employ a main team and cross-train them on different functions.
For example, Virginia-based Jefferson County Public Schools details all the duties of each crisis planning and response team member in their crisis management plan.
3. Clearly outline objectives and scope
Here, you’ll state the intended purpose of your crisis management plan and what topics it’ll cover. Typically, you’ll include the basics like ensuring the safety of all students and staff, preventing loss and property damage, resuming normal schedules, and recovering after a critical incident.
For example, the Wakulla County School District establishes the intent of its crisis management plan in its very first section:
“A crisis response policy is intended to ensure staff and student safety through a time-limited and problem-focused intervention to identify, manage and resolve the crisis by utilization and deployment of the Crisis Response Team and identified supporting community agencies.”
4. Capture the entire property, indoors and out, to plan emergency actions
While a floor plan of an entire school building is useful, it can’t compete with a three-dimensional, true to life replica of the full campus to make it possible to plan and stress test emergency plans by the stakeholders.
Fortunately, Matterport’s digital twins make it easy to generate a digital twin of your entire campus.
This interactive floor plan makes it simpler to visualize traffic flows throughout the building, identify access points, and plan emergency and evacuation routes accordingly.
5. Plan school crisis response strategies
This section is the meat of your crisis management plan. Here, you’ll outline your planned responses to specific crisis events. Some of the incidents you’ll need to document strategies for include:
Unauthorized visitors
Bomb threats
Weapons on school property
Assaults (both on and off campus)
Child neglect and abuse
Pandemics and other contagious diseases
Death, serious injury, or illness of a school community member
Mental health crisis
A suicide threat or attempt
Natural disasters
Gas leaks or hazardous chemical exposure
A missing, lost, or kidnapped student
Community emergencies
Emergencies on school buses and field trips
Utility failures such as a blackout
Depending on the type of incident, these response strategies could include measures like:
Lockdown
Shelter in place
Lockout (securing the building)
Evacuation
For each of these strategies, detail what community resources you’ll need. For example, in what situation would you need to contact police versus EMS? And when should you bring in counseling services—versus leaning on an existing school counselor or school psychologist—for students and staff for the recovery phase of an emergency?
To make it easier to follow the response protocols you establish in your crisis management plan, consider creating a crisis response checklist like the Wakulla County School District to serve as a quick reference.
6. Training for emergency mitigation
As aforementioned, training and drills can prevent panic and confusion during an emergency. This helps keep safety protocols front of mind for faculty, staff, and students.
Address what types of training and its frequency will be required of staff and faculty. That could include regular reviews of reporting and investigation protocols or a course to identify bullying and harassment before it escalates.
This section will also include mandated drills and their frequency for students. That could include tornado drills, evacuation drills in the event of a bomb threat, or shelter-in-place drills.
For example, Jefferson County Public Schools includes an entire appendix (Appendix C) that walks readers through various training and drills plus practice scenarios to help trainees stay prepared.
The right resources can make training easier. For example, administrators can provide faculty and staff with a link to the school’s digital twin as part of training. Faculty and staff can perform a virtual walkthrough of any part of the campus to familiarize themselves with emergency routes, fire exits, and the location of safety equipment ahead of any drills. Take this immersive safety training to the next level by embedding supplemental documents, files, and notes right in your digital twin via Mattertags. For example, you can label building entrances that are locked at a specific time in the evening.
7. Share visibility with first responders
Schools don’t have to tackle any crises alone. That’s why school officials should build partnerships with community organizations on their crisis management plans—particularly law enforcement agencies, EMS, local mental health services, and nearby hospitals.
Working closely with these agencies will ensure school officials are consulting expert crisis responders and exchanging information that will help with logistics and operations in the case of an incident.
For example, administrators can share a link to a digital twin of the school property with fire and EMS responders in seconds. Emergency responders and firefighters are typically first on the scene of an emergency, and a comprehensive virtual view of the property at their fingertips means they can quickly review all the entry and exit points, which is critical, for example, if halls are filled with smoke.
8. Review and test the plans
Compiling all your response strategies in your crisis response plan is just the first step in preparing for emergencies. Now, it’s time to create a schedule to practice those responses.
As mentioned above, safety drills can go a long way to ensure your school’s faculty, staff, and students know what to do in the case of an emergency. Practice makes perfect and drills can help identify improvements to response plans. It’s also wise to regularly review your crisis management plan to make updates. You can document this schedule right in your plan. In the case of Wakulla County Schools, their plan dictates that the crisis response team should meet at the beginning of each school year and mid-way through the year to update team member contact info and any other necessary details.
Still have some questions about crisis management in schools? We’ve gathered the most common queries and answered them below to help you dive deeper into the topic.
