Developing real-time IoT-based public safety alert and emergency response systems.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Public Safety Technology

Background:

• Existing emergency response systems often face challenges with latency and reliability.
• The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices offers opportunities for enhanced public safety solutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a real-time IoT-based emergency response and public safety alert system.
• To ensure low-latency and high-availability alert dissemination during critical incidents.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a distributed network of heterogeneous sensors (gas, flame, vibration, biometric) and edge computing nodes (Raspberry Pi, ESP32).
• Employed secure MQTT over TLS for primary communication, with LoRa as a fallback for low-connectivity areas.
• Tested a prototype in a smart city simulation testbed across fire, traffic accident, gas leak, and medical distress scenarios.

Main Results:

• Achieved consistent alert latency under 450 ms and detection accuracy exceeding 95%.
• Demonstrated scalability supporting over 12,000 concurrent devices.
• Outperformed seven state-of-the-art systems in latency, reliability (99.1% alert success), and uptime (99.8%).

Conclusions:

• The developed IoT system offers a robust and efficient solution for real-time emergency response and public safety alerts.
• The system shows significant potential for deployment in urban, industrial, and vulnerable environments.
• Future work includes integrating AI for prediction and federated learning for cloudless operations.