There are many ways to describe a smart city, but it helps to cite practical use cases; examples of how smart city technologies and applications can improve lives. In this video, we highlight two examples in the public safety sector:
Triangle UAS, which is working with the city of Wilson, North Carolina to deploy a secure, real-time streaming app for drone surveillance to help first-responders in emergency situations; and
iNotify out of Richardson, Texas, which has developed an artificial intelligence platform to identify weapons in security camera footage and automatically alert officials.
Both Triangle UAS and iNotify were selected as winners of challenge competitions hosted by communities in the US Ignite Smart Gigabit Communities (SGC) program. They received subaward funding from National Science Foundation to pursue further development work and to participate in US Ignite’s Kauffman FastTrac startup training.
Notable Quotes
“Drones are becoming really popular in the public safety arena with police departments, fire departments, and emergency management, but currently it’s very difficult to use that data in real time. We decided that we were going to address the problem. We’ve developed an application as well as some hardware that allows public safety responders to stream that data back in real time and provide analytics.”
“[US Ignite has] given us access to a lot of resources outside of Wilson to help get some user feedback… and deploy this on a test case.” –Taylor Kerby, Triangle UAS
“Within a second of a gun being wielded in real life, it’s possible for a nearby police officer to receive a picture of the gunman and the gun.” –Ashlesha Nesarikar, Plano Intelligence & iNotify