[LINK] Smart Cities

[Tom Worthington]

On 07/03/12 01:31, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> Tom writes ... centralised control ... makes the
>> systems very fragile....
>
> Yes agreed Tom. De-centralizd, function-specific&  well-resourced local
> city-management systems ...

Yes, a command centre is a good idea, as long as it is designed so it 
does not depend on a remote "cloud" server which may be unavailable in 
an emergency. See some examples of command centre design in my blog: 
http://blog.tomw.net.au/search/label/command%20centre

> ... with eyes on the ground but also drones ...

Before the expense and complexity of "Drones" I suggest the city to look 
to the information which its day to day systems, staff and citizens can 
provide. As an example staff will be out and about responding to the 
emergency and reporting back. Also citizens reporting problems will help.

> A better system would be more than a city wide. State-wide is equitable.

There are multiple levels of emergency centre, both government and 
private (such as at telecos), interconnected. The Australian Government 
has this with its "Crisis Coordination Centre" (CCC), opened late last 
year. This has a Situation Awareness Room, space for 100 staff and 
secure communications to other federal and state centres. This allows 
the different groups to get on with their own work, without excessive 
interference and also a level of redundancy.

Also any command centre needs trained commanders, who know what is 
possible, and what is not, in a crisis. Senior civilian and military 
personnel are trained together in crisis management (I attended one 
session at staff college, where we had to rescue hostages from 
terrorists). There can be a problem if the government ministers do not 
take part in this training and then try to micromanage in a crisis, but 
most have the good sense not to.

ps: While on the subject of training, the next free Formidable Footprint 
disaster exercise is 31 March: http://www.formidablefootprint.org/


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/