The U.S. portion of the World Cup is taking place in 11 host cities over 38 days, expected to attract 5 million visitors from across the world. Technology is supporting government efforts to prepare for these events from a security standpoint to protect critical infrastructure against adversaries. But tech is also supporting other community needs as large gatherings occur.
One of the U.S. host cities, Houston, is using Atlas — an integrated application monitoring live assets for the special event — to oversee the status of such things as ambulances, fire trucks, police vehicles and infrastructure, as explained by Francesco Carmine, GIS analyst for the Houston Office of Emergency Management (OEM).
“This program that we conceived and made for FIFA, it was not made for the intent to only be used for this World Cup, but to elevate our workflow and the way that we monitor and use GIS for all of our events,” said Carmine.
Beyond OEM, the platform is available for use by select employees within Houston Public Works (HPW), the Houston Police Department (HPD) and the Houston Fire Department. OEM helps coordinate information sharing across city agencies.
The World Cup games held in Houston are taking place between June 14 and July 4, and the city’s free FIFA Fan Festival (Fan Fest) is the city’s community destination for live match-viewing parties. In its first week, the hub drew more than 107,000 attendees. But weather has posed some safety risks that compelled the city to temporarily close the Fan Fest.
The technology-powered insights streamlined the city’s response, Carmine said. Because weather is integrated into city systems, the city could stay informed about the potential impacts of weather on visitors and venues, while OEM's Emergency Operations Center ensured officials could verify that high-water vehicles were nearby for necessary evacuations. In case of flooding, the city can monitor issues as they arise, such as inaccessible roads, fallen trees or impacted streetlights.
“So, through that application, we are able to communicate with our crews on the field that can go and clear the path,” said Carmine. “So, our job is to make sure that all the basic services that the city provides can still go through the emergency and the special event itself.”
From a public safety perspective, the application can be used to help police officers more clearly understand the “operation picture,” said HPD GIS Manager Patrick Alexander. Between police data, drone imagery and other data sources, he said that the platform provides officers with greater context.
The city is using data from a variety of sources to support event preparedness, including local partners, the regional consortium Houston TranStar, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Waze and others to create a comprehensive view of relevant information for special events. The city is using an array of technology to support this work including sensors, Esri’s ArcGIS and AI.
City of Houston
The work to create this kind of tool dates back several years, but last fall it really got underway, developing the initial proof of concept for the application in January, according to Anthony Powell, IT assistant director with HPW.
There are more than 200 special events every year in the city, Alexander said, and this application could be used for those events, as well: “I would say that we’re not done.”
Houston is not the only Texas city hosting World Cup games; Dallas is as well. The Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is the world’s fourth-busiest by passenger count, and the airport covers more than 26.9 square miles — it even has its own city designation and ZIP code.
DFW uses an array of technology to manage large numbers of passengers that use the airport each day, including lidar, GIS and predictive modeling.
“From a perspective of a large event like the World Cup, we've had to adapt a lot of those technologies to [an] influx of passengers,” said Adan Banda, senior geospatial data manager for the airport.
DFW’s incident response platform is one application that supports crowd management, using sensors to display where congestion is happening around the airport.
In addition, the airport is using curbside lidar technology as part of a new pilot, although Banda said ultimately this will be coupled with a CCTV camera network. This dashboard displays where vehicles and pedestrians are moving outside the airport building. If there are issues with the flow of pedestrian traffic, this resource shows staff where to dispatch personnel, Banda explained. The platform and the technology powering it are evolving, but ultimately, it will feed into the airport’s incident response platform, Banda said.
This pilot has not yet been used to support holiday season traffic, Banda noted, but his team is eager to see it used this winter; he hopes that in addition to lidar, the resource will use cameras and Esri’s ArcGIS Velocity by then.
The work to use technology to plan for and serve crowds is not limited to Texas. For example, the city of Seattle has installed IKE Smart City digital kiosks, which aid public information dissemination and wayfinding, in part to support people visiting for the World Cup. The LinkNYC digital kiosks in New York City are being used to livestream the World Cup games for New York residents and visitors; the city has a full GIS map available on its website.
This story first appeared in Government Technology, Industry Insider — Texas’ sister publication.
