Harris County - Next Generation First Responder (NGFR) Case Study: Sensor and Event Alerts

This case study describes how DHS S&T identified and applied sensor and event alerting standards during the NGFR – Harris County Operational Experimentation (OpEx), taking real-time data from numerous sensors, assessing it against pre-established thresholds, displaying it on unified situational awareness applications, and issuing alerts when the sensor readings exceeded the thresholds. Alerting gives the Incident Commander, command staff and first responders the right information at the right time to make lifesaving decisions. This case study provides an overview of the systems used, the challenges encountered and the solution implemented for the OpEx, as well as considerations that any public safety agency should think through if they intend to implement sensor and event alerting for their organization.