A Smart City Application Design for Efficiently Tracking Missing Person in Large Gatherings in Madinah Using Emerging IoT Technologies

Ensuring the safety of residents and visitors is one of the major priorities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). There are some residents in Madinah who are vulnerable or prone to getting lost in crowded areas, including children, the elderly, and people with certain diseases and disorders. Besides, the Kingdom receives millions of visiting pilgrims in Madinah and Makkah and thousands of them get lost every year around Masjid-e-Nabavi and Masjid Al Haram. Considering the importance of the safety of residents and visiting pilgrims in Madinah, in this paper, we propose a smart city application design for tracking and locating the missing person using an emerging Internet of Things (IoT) based system. We propose to evaluate the performance of Bluetooth low energy (BLE), low power wide area network (LPWAN), technologies, both individually and as a hybrid solution. We propose an IoT based system with a proactive approach to help security officials in Madinah and the Department of lost and found in Masjid e Nabavi in two major safety issues: 1) Tracking the companion of missing person found by a security official and 2) Tracking the missing person using reported location via IoT based system. We present our proposed smart city application design and its implementation scenarios in Madinah.