Department of Homeland Security Case Study
“I was impressed with the ‘state of the
Coordinated response
Organize and safeguard personnel across all responder domains.
Standards-based environment
The OGC standard provides a consistent, repeatable process for IoT data aggregation.
Real-time insights
Preemptively respond to scenarios in real time as events unfold.
About the Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a vital mission: to secure the nation from the many threats it faces. Part of that mission is about enabling first responders including police, fire, hazmat and military to better coordinate their responses to major incidents like terrorist threats, earthquakes and floods. They call this initiative the Next Generation First Responders (NGFR) Program and it’s all about making first responders better protected, connected and fully aware.
The challenge
Although sensor technology is advancing at a very rapid pace, most of the equipment in use by first responders can’t leverage these new technologies. To achieve the significant advantages that connected equipment offers, the DHS is working with industry and public safety groups to provide innovative tools and technologies that will ensure the safety of their personnel and the public.
In order to equip first responders with the next generation of tools and technology, the NGFR program leverages advanced communication systems, drones, and other technologies. These can include smart shirts and watches (physiological monitoring), vehicle geospatial position (location and orientation), mobile video cameras, laser range finders, and smart cities technologies.
To achieve this result, the DHS must overcome an environment of closed proprietary systems that make it difficult for disparate technologies to seamlessly share data, or even connect to one another.
A critical requirement is the ability to coordinate real-time information across different first responder groups in real time.
“It is imperative that we design this to adequately capture and provide for the unique needs of responders in critical incidents, especially the need to get the right information to the right person at the right time,” said John Merrill, NGFR Apex Program Director.
The solution
The vision is to provide an open, plug-and-play, standards-based environment that enables faster, more efficient, and safer responses to threats and disasters of all sizes.
Today, sensors connect automatically as soon as the sensor is deployed, providing updated observations, analyses, alerts, and predictive analytics from emergency response information systems and mobile devices. The missing link is a standardized technology that makes sensors easily and immediately identifiable, accessible, usable, and useful across all teams and information management platforms.
SensorUp provides this crucial link, collecting, cleaning, and aggregating IoT data generated by diverse sensors and platforms. Once the data has been optimized, command teams share a common view of operations in their own tools or inside SensorUp Explorer, a visual no-code dashboard, where they can perform enhanced visualization and analysis.
Watch the DHS video which showcases the complexity of personnel from multiple first responder domains—fire, law enforcement, and emergency medical—when responding to an event. This multifaceted scenario reflects the value in collecting and aggregating IoT data during an emergency so that command personnel are able to respond in the moment.