NIST launches new $1 million public safety challenge

The National Institute for Standards and Technology’s Public Safety Communications Research (NIST’s PSCR) division has unveiled a new public safety tech challenge—and in an unusual twist, it has enlisted the help of Freelancer.com to promote awareness of the project.

The Command Dashboard Integrating Next-Gen Technology (CommanDING Tech) Challenge, which includes collaboration with Freelancer.com and LMI, continues NIST’s work on developing smart and practical user interfaces that fit the needs of public safety users. In this case, the agency says in a release, the focus is on development of incident command dashboards that will “allow for real-time tracking of assets, personnel, and objects of interest during emergency crisis scenarios.”

“Incident Commands do not currently have a trustworthy, tested technology for responding to emergency situations, and instead currently rely on writing all emergency information by hand,” NIST said in announcing the challenge, which hopes to bring together first responders, public safety and video analytics experts and others to “advance and enhance the role of augmented reality interfaces in public safety” through dashboards that can be designed in AR, VR, web-based or mobile mediums, but have to be accessible for mobile use by first responders.

The four-phase challenge has a total prize pool of $1 million, with a final phase that will include live demonstrations of the participating prototypes. The first phase is a concept paper, followed by prototype development, then running the dashboards through an emergency scenario with simulated data, and finally, a live event in which the use of the competing dashboards are demonstrated through response to a stage public safety emergency in a multi-story building.