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How Factal verifies tornado reports for security and crisis response teams

Sarah Burke

Tornadoes wreak havoc on the continental United States every year, causing widespread structural damage and killing dozens of people. Authorities say about 1,000 tornadoes impact the continental United States annually, 20 percent of which might be considered violent.
No one knows this better than Factal North America Lead Theresa Seiger who has become the resident expert on tornadoes. She leads the editorial team when preparing for tornado season each year and covers their impacts across the country.

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The team that keeps Brigham Young University students and staff safe around the world

Dave Clark
The image depicts a scenic view of a mountainous landscape at dawn or dusk. In the foreground, there is a sprawling urban area with a mix of buildings, including a prominent multi-story structure with horizontal lines and another large building beside it. The cityscape is surrounded by dense clusters of trees. Behind the urban area, a series of rugged mountains rise steeply, displaying a variety of earthy tones such as browns and greens. The mountains have visible ridges and valleys, creating a striking contrast against the smoother textures of the sky. The sky itself is gently lit, indicating a soft sunrise or sunset light.

Landes Holbrook, Senior Manager for Global Security, Health and Safety, saw the need for an intelligence platform that student assistants could adopt quickly – one that still delivered detailed, actionable risk intelligence without overwhelming the team with noise. They needed speed, clarity and simplicity. A few years ago, Holbrook and Cluff selected Factal to help meet that challenge.

“Of all the platforms we use, I think it’s [Factal] that is most quickly adopted and understood by them,” Cluff says about the student assistants on the team. “They all picked it up quite fast, within a week.”

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Preparing for the 2026 Men’s FIFA World Cup with Factal

Sarah Burke
The image is a map of North America, specifically highlighting the United States, parts of Canada, and Mexico, with color-coded circles indicating locations of proximity alerts related to World Cup sites. The circles vary in size and color, representing different alert frequencies. The map prominently displays cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Toronto, and New York, among others. Larger clusters of circles are noticeable around major cities like Los Angeles and Kansas City. A red cluster is visible in Canada near Toronto. The map is overlaid with a large text box in the upper left corner, and a logo in the lower right corner.

Logistical complexity — and very expensive tickets — makes attending this year’s World Cup particularly challenging already for sports fans. For risk intelligence professionals too, this tournament will push the limits of experience and require a multi-faceted approach. Jalisco is another reminder that incidents can move quickly — as can rumors — and verified information is of critical importance.

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Security at the core of Amnesty International’s human rights work

Factal
Patrick Thompson and Anna Wright outside a destroyed school in Mykolaiv oblast.

Through Factal’s free NGO program, Amnesty’s security team can cut through the noise and focus only on what truly matters, all backed by a newsroom of experienced journalists verifying information in real time. “I appreciate the effort by the Factal editorial team that goes into monitoring sources that are less easy to access, in languages that are less easy to cover,” says Thomas de Lacoste, Deputy Director of Security at Amnesty International.

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