In the public safety industry, the concepts of digital transformation have the potential to become very beneficial in terms of crisis and emergency incident management. On the other hand, public safety and emergency services organisations have been much focused on reliability, stability and availability of the services they provide to protect the citizens. Therefore, emergency services did not naturally embrace the internet’s capabilities, and connecting a Public Safety Answering Point to the internet has very often been regarded as an avoidable risk, rather than an opportunity to present the current services differently or to create new services.

This paper is intended to give insight into various aspects of “digital transformation” in public safety and emergency services, especially focusing on the potential that the “Internet of Things” is supposed to offer for the future.

Starting with taking a brief look who the users of IoT are likely going to be, the document is going to approach technology drivers and different aspects of sensors technology embedded into communication flows. After that, the impact of IoT on public safety will be assessed and discussed, leading to a deeper look into specific use cases. Topics around privacy, security as well as standards are briefly touched, before summary and conclusion lead to specific recommendations for the various stakeholders.

EENA would like to thank Mr. Markus Bornheim (Avaya, EENA Technical Committee Vice-Chair) for his valuable contributions to this publication.

 

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