The US city of St Louis has tested smart city technologies and proved the potential for them to have a dramatic, positive impact on the day-to-day city operations across all departments. It used software from local company Coolfire.
 
In collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), 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 a traffic accident to floods or earthquakes.
 
For the pilot, Coolfire connected first responders, work crews in the field, 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. The technology centralised the communication and collaboration of cross-functional departments, IoT sensors and data sharing, using a single, fully integrated method to support various emergency scenarios that demonstrated relevance to everyday activities.
 
“Finding the types of new technologies included in the pilot is central to our smart city strategy,” said Robert Gaskill-Clemons, chief technology officer for the city of 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 in St Louis.”
 
The pilot focused on flooding in downtown St Louis and the resulting every day and emergency events. 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,” said 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. The promise of smart city technologies requires a solution like Coolfire to deliver the real-world value.”
 
This effort is an extension of the Smart Cities Internet of Things (SCITI) Labs programme and part of Coolfire’s larger effort to provide a class of collaboration software applications that are easily deployable and cloud-based, and accelerate the digital journeys of governments and cities to serve citizens.
 
Coolfire is a software development company that enhances real-time event awareness, control and response. It has developed collaboration software focused on situational awareness and capable of organising distributed people, assets and information to get more work done, faster. The patented technology orchestrates cross-functional teams across time and location to respond faster and more effectively.