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A new smart city project is designed to enhance public safety and efficient and effective operations across all city departments. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is working to bring smart cities standards to the public-safety community. DHS S&T launched a smart cities technology integration pilot in St. Louis in collaboration with both the city and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).

Through this pilot, the partners will research, design and test the Smart City Interoperability Reference Architecture (SCIRA) as an interoperable framework that integrates commercial proprietary internet of things (IoT) sensors for public-safety applications at the community level. 

SCIRA will provide free deployment guides, reusable design patterns, and other resources that municipalities can use to plan, acquire, and implement standards-based, cost-effective, vendor-agnostic, and future-proof Smart City IT systems and networks using technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Sensor Webs, and Geospatial Frameworks.

The goal of the SCIRA pilot, according to rrmediagroup.com, is to integrate and test existing real-world technologies that can augment and improve all day-to-day city operations and emergency response capabilities. The pilot will test the technologies’ performances and ability to enhance public safety via a series of major flooding, flash flooding, vulnerable population outreach and building fire scenarios. 

Applications planned for testing include situational awareness and a common operating picture, CAD, dynamic routing and route planning, workforce mobility and in-building navigation. Project findings will help design open, interoperable methods for incorporating smart city technologies across city services using shared technology standards.