An Integrated Situational Awareness Platform for Disaster Planning and Emergency Response

Smart city applications and systems deal with numerous dynamic, spatial, and temporal factors. The complexities of such systems make it difficult, if not impossible, to model their structures, behaviors, and interactions with their external environment. Our objective was to provide a comprehensible visualization which simplifies the complex facets of city management and operations. To achieve this goal, we developed an integrated situational awareness platform for smart city planning, management, and applications for emergency response. Through the visualization of integrated geographic information systems and real-time data analysis, our platform provides insights into operational implications and offers information to support effective decision making. We piloted our platform in several cities and city districts under the funding support of Guangdong Science and Technology Foundation. Applications of the platform include citywide police emergency planning and response, natural disaster handling, and traffic control and optimization. Sensors of various kinds were employed for data collection and the collected data were processed to provide real-time geospatial and temporal analysis and visualization. Results from these pilot projects showed that the integrated situational awareness analysis and visualization can help facilitate the understanding of complex city management and operational optimization. Our integrated situational awareness platform provides an effective mechanism for building practical smart city applications.