The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) partnered with the city of St. Louis in Missouri to demonstrate “smart city” concepts to support emergency response operations.
DHS said Tuesday that S&T and the St. Louis government integrated internet of things (IoT) technologies such as sensor systems into public-services networks to assess potential IoT concepts as part of the Smart City Interoperability Reference Architecture (SCIRA) program.
The SCIRA team partnered with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and nonprofit incubator T-Rex to utilize commercial technologies and conduct exercises under the pilot program.
Participants in the simulated exercises worked to integrate disparate information technology networks for various public emergency scenarios including flash floods, building fires and vehicular accidents.
“SCIRA should facilitate greater situational awareness across municipalities, counties, cities and states,” said Norman Speicher, SCIRA program manager at S&T.
“The City of St. Louis wanted to expose their departments to some example technologies for the purpose of expanding their understanding of what might be technically possible.”
