NIST Hosts Workshop on “Whole Community Preparedness for Smart Cities and Communities”

On 27-28 August 2024, NIST’s Smart Connected Systems Division hosted a workshop at the George H. W. Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington D.C. to examine an approach to “Whole Community Preparedness for Smart Cities and Communities.” The purpose of the workshop was to consider a concept first articulated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of a national “whole community approach” to emergency preparedness and determine its applicability as a component of community resilience and infrastructure security within smart and connected communities.

The goal of the workshop was then to define a structure for community safety, security, economic vitality, and overall community resilience through integration of advanced technologies into city operations and infrastructure. The workshop brought together a team of senior first responders, emergency managers, researchers, smart city practitioners, and city, state, and federal authorities to provide perspectives on current and future requirements for enabling communities to more capably manage complex threats to public safety, health, and community welfare. In addition to the Smart Connected Systems Division organizers, the workshop included representatives from FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Department of State’s Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary (STAS), the NIST Engineering Laboratory’s Community Resilience program, and the Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) of the NIST Communications Technology Laboratory. Over the course of the two-day workshop, attendees participated in structured discussions and break-out sessions to define the acceptability, feasibility, and general structure of an integrated communications infrastructure to support community disaster planning and response and to improve multi-agency crisis communications among local officials and leaders.

The effort to develop a technological foundation for whole community preparedness is a priority for smart cities and communities and reflects goals established in the NIST GCTC Strategic Plan to define holistic key performance indicators (H-KPIs) and future requirements for enabling communities to more capably manage complex threats to critical infrastructure and public safety, health, and community welfare.

Work is in progress to distill the discussions and findings from the workshop, and a summary NIST Workshop Report will be published early next year.