Op-ed written for smartcitymag.fr, by Éric Boileau, technical director of the IT Link group.
“The main challenges of any alert system are the speed of triggering and the relevance of the response provided, whether it is a question of correctly targeting the people to be notified, or deciding which emergency system to mobilize.” Éric Boileau, technical director of the IT Link group.
What if digital technology modernized the way we raise the alert in order to respond more effectively? By focusing on the democratization of IoT and the ultra-connectivity of populations, alerting is being reinvented to better fit into the connected cities of tomorrow.
Three types of alert systems exist to date. First, alerts sent by the authorities to the general public in case of imminent danger (earthquakes, floods). It is in this context that the SAIP application was created in 2016, but unfortunately deactivated two years later. The cause: dysfunctions that have reduced its credibility, but above all an ineffective model. In the summer of 2017, only 900,000 people had installed it on their smartphone. To be effective, this type of alert must allow for massive and instantaneous dissemination.
Second, individual or family devices, intended to prevent a list of contacts, specific to the user (remote assistance between children and parents or for isolated elderly people, for example). Finally, alert systems are also becoming widespread within companies or large communities. It is then a question of ensuring the protection of agents in the field by providing a tool for responding to dangerous situations.
BETWEEN INTERCONNECTION OF POPULATIONS AND GENERALIZATION OF SENSORS
The main challenges of any alert system are the speed of triggering and the relevance of the response provided, whether it is a question of correctly targeting the people to be notified, or of deciding which emergency system to mobilize.
Until recently, the infrastructures at the heart of alerting were heavy, and therefore limited to large institutions, whether voice telephone networks, sirens, radios, etc. But today, mobile networks, the democratization of smartphone applications and the rise of social networks have created a widespread and permanent interconnection.
These developments brought about by digital technology have had the effect of increasing our level of demand in terms of the timeliness of information, especially when our security is at stake. It is this same interconnection that now offers alert devices new technological perspectives. Alerting is getting richer and is tending to revolutionize the world of security.
This rapid evolution is also based on the development of a technology capable of making objects interact with intelligent systems and trigger alerts without human intervention: IoT (Internet of Things). It allows sensors, for example, to detect the sound of a gunshot or the rapid rise in the level of a stream in order to trigger an alert.
COMMUNICATION, A CRUCIAL ISSUE IN ALERTING
Alert triggering systems already equip most connected cars. When an accident is detected, information is centralized and shared with emergency services, insurance companies but also with all vehicles traveling nearby in order to limit the risk of an over-accident. This type of measure fits perfectly into the development of smart cities, and will make it possible, as of tomorrow, to set up alert systems integrated into buildings, candelabras or under the roadway.
In an emergency situation, the major challenge is to ensure the rapid delivery of the message. To achieve this, alert systems must rely on all available communication networks: satellite networks, mobile networks but also networks that offer lower speed while ensuring much wider geographic coverage such as Sigfox and LoRa.
In the era of smart cities and the Internet of Things, the announced revolution in alerting systems is a major advance in the safety of goods and people both at the level of communities and businesses.
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