St Louis tests smart city emergency system

The US city of St Louis has teamed with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology (DHS S&T) Directorate and software development company Coolfire for a smart city pilot related to emergency response capabilities.

The pilot demonstrated how first responders, emergency managers, and every other operating department (such as streets, water, health, and human services) could leverage Coolfire’s technology every day and during real-world emergency events – including everything from traffic accidents to floods or earthquakes.

City operations

St Louis reports the smart city technologies tested have proved their potential to have a “dramatic, positive impact” on the day-to-day city operations across all departments.

“Finding the types of new technologies included in the pilot is central to our smart city strategy,” said Dr Robert Gaskill-Clemons, chief technology officer for St Louis.

“Coolfire successfully demonstrated how the capabilities included in the pilot could enhance city operations and enable the city to respond to events as a city – instead of individual departments – with potential life-saving implications, thereby improving the quality of life for the residents and businesses.”

For the pilot, Coolfire connected first responders, work crews in the field, an operations centre and citizens – orchestrating their real-time interactions through a common operational picture – to improve situational awareness and enabling them to respond faster and more effectively.

“This pilot demonstrated how the same technology keeping soldiers safe on the battlefield can dramatically improve a city’s response during emergencies.”

Coolfire’s technology centralised the communication/collaboration of cross-functional departments, IoT sensors, and data-sharing utilising a single, fully integrated solution to support a variety of emergency scenarios that demonstrated relevance to everyday activities.

The pilot focused on flooding in downtown St Louis. The test scenarios included river monitoring, flash flooding, assisting vulnerable citizens, building fires and accident incident response.

“Coolfire has served commercial and military markets for many years,” added Don Sharp, CEO at Coolfire.

“This pilot demonstrated how the same technology keeping soldiers safe on the battlefield can dramatically improve a city’s response during emergencies, as well as streamline daily operations.”

Coolfire is a software development company that enhances real-time event awareness, control, and response. It claims to have developed the only collaboration software focused on situational awareness, capable of organising distributed people, assets, and information to get more work done, faster.

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