Preparing for the Next Hurricane Irma, or Harvey: How analytics and smart cities will help

Source(s): Huffington Post Inc.

By Alisa Valudes Whyte

The United States has sustained 15 separate billion-dollar natural disasters in 2017, proving to be one of the costliest recovery years on record. How can cities make sure that going forward, their citizens remain safe and their odds of expensive disaster mitigation go down?

In the age of smart cities, the answer is data.

Information streaming from more than 1.6 billion smart devices and a wealth of relevant open-source data sets on weather, location and energy use are available to cities today. The problem is that many times this data lives in siloes — unable to be easily blended together to prepare and respond to disasters. To be effective, these silos need to be broken and the data made fluid and accessible.

If managed properly, smart cities can use this data to manage disasters after they happen and mitigate the effects of future disasters before they occur. 

[...]

Explore further

Country and region United States of America
Share this

Please note: Content is displayed as last posted by a PreventionWeb community member or editor. The views expressed therein are not necessarily those of UNDRR, PreventionWeb, or its sponsors. See our terms of use

Is this page useful?

Yes No Report an issue on this page

Thank you. If you have 2 minutes, we would benefit from additional feedback (link opens in a new window).