Integration of Heterogeneous Sensor Systems for Disaster Responses in Smart Cities: Flooding as an Example

Smart cities represent a new perspective on modern urban development. They involve an information infrastructure environment with application intelligence to improve operational efficiency and welfare effectively. However, understanding how to overcome the barriers of data fragmentation and heterogeneity to exploit the strengths of existing resources and create integration effects remains a key challenge in smart city development. This research focuses on the effective management of heterogeneous sensor systems across different domains to improve quick disaster responses. Metadata serve as the core of this proposed framework, which is designed to not only describe the common and unique characteristics of various IoT-based devices and services, but also to provide necessary information to support the searching, requesting, and updating of required sensors and observation, as well as responding to the upcoming disaster. A workflow consisting of four list types was proposed and used to guide the response procedure. This research specifically aims to enable heterogeneous sensor systems available to all public or private stakeholders to be integrated in a collaborative fashion. While a flooding response was chosen for demonstration in this research, the proposed standard-based framework can be further promoted for other types of smart city applications, not limited to disaster response. The study’s results and implications underscore the importance of effective management of heterogeneous sensor systems and the role of metadata in enabling disaster responses in smart cities.