Campus safety apps have understandably grown in popularity in recent years — particularly in the wake of an overwhelming majority of students now toting smartphones — as a means to better secure campus and keep students safe.  One of the many apps available comes from Rave Mobile Safety (Rave) who has announced the sixth iteration of its campus safety app.

Rave Guardian App 6.0 includes a more refined user interface, multi-campus support for larger institutions and expanded reporting capabilities. Additionally, all safety actions are now on the app’s home screen, linking the user to friends, campus safety or tip-lines with a single touch. The new design also provides faster and easier access to vision-impaired users.

The Guardian App has seen widespread adoption and use among employees and students on the campus of Florida State University. “It provides peace of mind and helps students feel safe knowing they have a tool that connects directly to the police if help is needed,” says David Perry, chief of police at Florida State University. “We plan to implement the latest version of the app to ensure the continued safety for our student population of 42,000 and more than 13,000 full and part time employees.”

The latest version’s multi-campus support provides disparate campuses at larger institutions with their own separate app configurations. In this way, app users can be linked to the closest safety resources based on which specific campus they are on. A new reporting console, meanwhile, records both aggregate and individual event history from the app, providing tools to characterize effectiveness and usage trends — a feature that the company hopes will aid safety departments in determining which areas of campus may require extra support.

Rave Guardian is a fully hosted Software-as-a-Service solution. Higher ed institutions deploying Rave Guardian get access to a dispatcher console that can be uniquely configured to their specific campus operation. The system also integrates into existing procedures and student information systems and is accompanied by 24/7 customer support.

In addition to Guardian 6.0, Rave offers Alert, a broadcast emergency notification solution, and Rave EyeWitness, a service that enables students to confidentially text campus police about threats or safety issues.