Hybrid IoT System for Emergency Responders

One of the critical factors for a successful emergency mission is reliable communication between emergency responders and the community. In today’s world, there is an increasing need to collect and provide meaningful information to communities and their fire service organizations in real-time to assist with informed decision-making and early hazard alerts. Our proposed solution to this problem is a multi-modal emergency communication system based on NB-IoT, C-V2X, and nearby networking technologies. Our system is designed to converge various services, such as data collection from sensors deployed in remote industrial and residential areas, wildfire detection and monitoring, nearby communication for first responders, vehicle-to-vehicle communication for fire trucks, and ground-to-aerial communication for UAVs. We utilize the Container Registry provided by the Azure platform for over-the-air updates and to deploy new modules and updates. In addition to the hardware systems, we propose a cloud dashboard to manage all devices and offer real-time data visualization, device tracking, asset management, and live-video streaming. These features facilitate highly reliable communication among responders with low delay, enabling them to respond quickly and efficiently to emergencies.