Middlesbrough County Council already provides public services including awareness campaigns and advertisements such as the “Keep it, Lock it” campaign. With a population of approximately 150,000, the detail of postcode cross-reference data would become an essential feature to narrow alerts down to exact units, rather than districts. The PSAS website could become a government funded service, utilised as a county-wide anti-terrorism alerting service. Emergency planners would have another route of communication with the public in the event of a crisis, such as terrorism. In this particular situation, police would normally have to visit every resident and use the media, which would drain resources and squander valuable time. Simply by sending a text message through PSAS, the police could notify residents of an immediate evacuation within seconds.

The Foot and Mouth disease that occurred in the United Kingdom between February and September 2001 caused thousands of animals to be slaughtered and public distress at the closure of the countryside. It badly effected the operational and financial situations of those people involved. The community affected by this epidemic, i.e. farmers, walkers, visitors and local business owners, found little or no information to help them during the ban on animal movements. There was limited information available from council websites about the spread of the disease. Typically however, all animals that could contract the disease within a 3 kilometre radius of an infected animal had to be slaughtered. If a similar outbreak was to occur in the future, such as the bird flu virus, the PSAS system could inform the public within a specific radius of an infected area immediately, without the delays that were experienced at the time of the Foot and Mouth Disease.

SMS text messaging has been identified as a technology where students have indicated an interest in using it as a support tool. An experimental service has already been offered to students in Kingston University. Text messages alerted students of cancelled lessons, deadline reminders and hints to check Blackboard for assignment resources. A gradual increase in registered students throughout the semester suggested the experiment was a success. Following several similar pilot schemes by the University of Wolverhampton, they are to use bulk SMS texting to enhance student support. Participants in one particular pilot felt it had been helpful and the survey suggested that there was a role for SMS alerts within the university. Most educators and students are actually unaware that text messages can be bought in bulk and can be sent from a conventional computer. There are enormous possibilities to enhance and support student learning through SMS technologies.