Interviews

Smart, resilient and safe city

by Mark Rowe

According to the United Nations by the year 2025 the global population will have grown to over eight billion, with significantly more than half living in major conurbations. At the same time, increased urbanisation also increases the vulnerability of cities and their residents to terrorist attacks, crime, social unrest and to natural disasters. The concept of “urban security” protecting city residents and critical urban infrastructures such as airports, data centres, roads and power grids – takes on vital significance.

Tony O’Brien, head of sales for Siemens Building Technologies Solutions and Service Portfolio explains how taking an integrated approach can achieve a smart, resilient and safe city: “Authorities are faced with managing complex cities that are growing rapidly, often without any long-term strategic planning . More people are being squeezed into ever tighter spaces, towering skyscrapers, packed transportation networks, large capacity sports and entertainment venues are often considered as soft targets for criminals and terrorists.”

Business continuity is essential in ensuring the ongoing economic prosperity of a city and the cost of crime is shared across both the public and private sectors. Both parties are responsible for delivering continued access to education, employment, health care, utilities and transportation, all of which have a fundamental need for safety and security.

Tony continues: “Resilient cities are simply better prepared. It is crucial that suitable preventative measures be taken to ensure the reliability and resilience of infrastructures and business processes. Especially in times of limited budgets, authorities need to take a preventative and proactive stance in making strategic and tactical decisions. They need to invest in intelligent solutions which maximise the efficiency of limited human resources available for safety and security.

“For example, today’s airports are large and complex facilities; prime potential targets for terrorist attacks. A number of technologies are typically used to manage the protection of the perimeter, the terminal buildings and IT infrastructure – intrusion detection, wide-area video surveillance, access control and centralised management. All the systems operate through an integrated command and control platform to provide day-to-day-supervision of airport operations as well as coordinated and timely incident response. “

The sheer diversity of safety and security challenges faced by cities means that a holistic approach is becoming the strategy of choice. Solution providers are moving away from standalone products and systems and towards networked solutions which cover all stages of the entire security concept.

Tony says: “There are four phases of the safety and security cycle; prevention, protection, response and recovery.

Prevention can be sub-divided into two areas: prevention of emergencies or accidents and prevention of crime. Firstly, fire safety and extinguishing procedures to ensure business continuity in the event of a fire. Secondly, prevention of crime is a more wide-ranging field, particularly in urban environments where the threats are many and varied. Ranging from vandalism and graffiti, anti-social behavior, robberies, burglaries, , organised crime and political terrorism.

Protection of people and the protection of physical infrastructure and IT networks. Whether it is a busy train station during commuter rush hour or a major sporting event, large numbers of people present their own challenges in terms of safety and security. The first priority is to remove people from the source of the danger quickly without panic and as safely as possible. Instructions based on real-time data and managed from a central command and control point have consistently proved to be the most effective.
With the ever increasing role of IT in providing urban services, the protection of this “virtual backbone” is becoming more and more critical.

Response – if an incident does occur, immediate and effective intervention is imperative. The speed with which intervention resources are able to mobilize and the clarity and immediacy of the information they have to work are vital factors as are the co-ordination and the support provided to first responders.

Recovery – getting back to a normal state of operation as quickly and smoothly as possible is the objective, whether it is reopening a tunnel after a traffic accident or a complex operation rerouting public transport after a terrorist attack.

Integrating safety and security systems with command and control centres will protect a city far more effectively. It is essential to adopt systems which are able to integrate the different elements of the safety and security cycle and accommodate the complexities of the city environment, as well as the needs of stakeholders from private-sector companies.

In the event of a major incident, city authorities may well need to call on the services of several different emergency services from police and fire to transport and traffic management. Each service needs to have a complete overview of the situation and the available operating resources to make meaningful decisions on how to deal with the incident.

By integrating a variety of systems – communication, automatic alarm, information and video surveillance systems – into a central command and control platform, comprehensive and consistent incident response can be achieved. This is at the very heart of a smart, resilient and safe city.

About the writer

Tony O’Brien has over 15 years international experience of working with control platforms and he will be delivering a paper titled Smart Working Environments, as part of IFSEC 2014 looking at issues facing the security industry, in the Smart Buildings Theatre on June 18. The focus will be on how fully integrated smart and intelligent building technologies can positively affect the bottom line and also create a secure comfortable and automated working environment.

In response to a market that is increasingly demanding high level technology that will assess and manage critical situations, distribute information and co-ordinate and manage resources, Siemens Building Technologies has launched SiNVR, a security management control platform.

Visit www.siemens.com/buildingtechnologies

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