Developing real-time IoT-based public safety alert and emergency response systems
Han Zhang, Runze Zhang, Jiamanzhen Sun
Abstract
This paper presents the design and evaluation of a real-time IoT-based emergency response and public safety alert system tailored for rapid detection, classification, and dissemination of alerts during critical incidents. The proposed architecture combines a distributed network of heterogeneous sensors (e.g., gas, flame, vibration, and biometric), edge computing nodes (Raspberry Pi, ESP32), and cloud platforms (AWS IoT, Firebase) to ensure low-latency and high-availability operations. Communication is facilitated using secure MQTT over TLS, with fallback to LoRa for rural or low-connectivity environments. A prototype was implemented and tested across four emergency scenarios fire, traffic accident, gas leak, and medical distress within a smart city simulation testbed. The system achieved such as consistent alert latency under 450 ms, detection accuracy exceeding 95%, and scalability supporting over 12,000 concurrent devices. A comprehensive comparison against seven state-of-the-art systems confirmed superior performance in latency, reliability (99.1% alert success), and uptime (99.8%). These results underscore the system's potential for deployment in urban, industrial, and infrastructure-vulnerable environments, with future work aimed at incorporating AI-driven prediction and federated learning for cloudless operation.