St. Louis Leading in Smart Cities through Example

St. Louis, Missouri, home of the Gateway Arch, the Cardinals baseball team, and the largest beer producing plant in the US, is now also home to the first Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) SCIRA exercise pilot, according to a recent announcement.

“SCIRA is the Smart City Interoperability Reference Architecture. It’s a framework to facilitate the integration and operability of disparate IT systems,” said Norman Speicher, SCIRA program manager, S&T. “SCIRA should facilitate greater situational awareness across municipalities, counties, cities and states.”

In emergency situations, St. Louis believes, having a connected and efficient smart city can save time, property and lives. To that end, the release says that SCIRA is planning to assess smart city technology solutions and develop common standards to ensure they meet the needs of jurisdictions of different sizes. This way, rural areas can leverage the same tools as large urban centers. Through SCIRA’s findings, cities could have open, interoperable methods for incorporating technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) sensors into everyday public services and have unified standards across the spectrum of smart cities.

“I spearhead the city's smart city initiative. Technology is vitally important to protecting citizens, delivering emergency services and supporting public safety,” said Robert Gaskill-Clemons, CTO, City of St. Louis. “It allows us to be much more proactive when it comes to protecting our citizens, versus primarily being reactive.”

To learn about all sorts of Smart City innovations, join us at next year’s IoT Evolution Expo 2021: It’s Time to Grow, taking place in Miami in February. Call for speakers now open.