The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2017 was the most expensive year on record for disasters in the U.S., estimating $306 billion in total damage. The FBI also reported 2017 as having the most incidents and the most people killed in any one year by active shooters.

With this rise in crises across the United States, data and technology have an increasingly important role in improving emergency management departments across the country. Approximately 240 million calls are made to 911 in the United States each year, with at least 80 percent coming from wireless devices, yet many emergency management systems still operate on legacy systems made for wireline phones. As a result, people in need are unable to easily share precise locations or send media messages to responders, making emergency communication and resource coordination more costly and difficult.

City and national government entities are already making strides in using analytics to improve emergency response operations, from Google’s 911 study in San Francisco to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) work with FEMA to crowdsource real-time information during emergencies. Yet, emerging technologies present even greater opportunities to make our emergency management systems more intelligent, secure, and effective. While cities have long sought to integrate tech into disaster response, the available technologies and opportunities are constantly evolving. Today, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain offer the potential to generate, transmit and read emergency-related data for better decision-making in crises.

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