Integrating multi-scale real-time data for safe and resilient communities with Kristina Wolf

Emergency services play an essential part in serving our communities and keeping them safe. The management of emergencies is a collaborative effort amongst various stakeholders. Real-time data provides new opportunities for improving this collaboration, but brings significant technical challenges.  

Drawing upon a systems engineering approach, we define current stakeholders’ challenges and formulate requirements for an improved system. Based on these findings, we collect real-time traffic, weather and flood data from smart internet-enabled devices in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) and develop a geospatial data infrastructure for location-based analysis using Esri GIS technology and Microsoft Azure computing resources. By connecting interdependent data across existing systems and stakeholder boundaries, we can provide stakeholders with a more comprehensive operational picture and enable more efficient and informed decision support - demonstrating example capability of what a smart city can deliver. This research aims to deliver better initial operational support and impact assessment on the environment, people and infrastructure, and support researchers in interdisciplinary and complex multi-agency project environments.