NIST Researcher Leads Workshop on Whole Community Preparedness at Smart Cities Conference

On 16 April 2025, NIST researcher Michael Dunaway and colleagues organized and led a workshop on “Whole Community Preparedness for Smart, Connected Cities” at the TechConnect Smart Cities Conference in San Antonio, TX. This event was the second in a workshop series that was initiated with a similar workshop held in August 2024 at the George H.W. Bush School of Government of Texas A&M University in Washington, D.C. For both events the goal was to identify requirements, metrics, and standards for enhancing public safety, post-disaster recovery, and overall community resilience through the development and integration of digital technologies and cyber-physical systems.

The initial 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 the second workshop, the TechConnect Smart Cities Conference offered the opportunity for NIST to present outcomes from the August 2024 event and to solicit additional perspective on local preparedness needs and priorities by engaging with city officials and residents having direct experience in implementing technology-based solutions within their communities. The workshop was structured around a series of research questions and round-table discussions to broaden the base of knowledge about community and city efforts to build capacity in disaster communications, post-disaster recovery and overall community resilience. Four questions were used to frame the dialogue:

1. What capabilities should be developed to support communities in times of disaster or civil emergency?
2. What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be developed and integrated into a community decision support system for disaster planning, preparedness, and recovery?
3. Should a community information and decision support system be designed as:
   - A dedicated system to be reserved for local/civic preparedness and response only;
   - A dual-use system having utility for both Blue-Sky (normal) and Gray-Sky (crisis) days?
   (Unsurprisingly, the latter alternative was the near-unanimous preference.)
4. How should operational considerations –i.e., efficiency of command/control/coordination—be balanced with civic considerations such as transparency/access/equity and the maintenance of public trust?

The outcomes from the TechConnect Smart Cities workshop are currently being compiled and will be integrated as a separate section of the forthcoming NIST Workshop Report on Whole Community Preparedness in Smart Cities and Communities, anticipated to be published in late Spring 2025.