Public special events are the heart and soul of any community. While essential to the social fabric and economy of their regions, these events today require a level of operational intelligence that grows more complex by the day.
In preparation, public safety leaders face distinctive logistic challenges which require intense behind-the-scenes planning of every imaginable facet, including crowd control, traffic congestion, sanitary facilities, first aid, and more. The sheer size of events today mandates a large physical space to accommodate crowds of thousands. Risk factors and contingency plans range from the dramatic (terrorist threats) to the mundane (weather conditions).
To assure public safety, operational decision-makers need a solid safety operations plan and a system to provide situational awareness. Typically, the web of local, regional, and federal managers who collaborate for event safety use location technology, often a geographic information system (GIS), to plan and communicate in real time.
Parades and Special Events: Operational Intelligence and Data Fusion (esri.com)
