A smart city is characterised by the use of innovative technologies and concepts that improve the quality of life of its inhabitants and at the same time use resources efficiently. In this concept, sirens and warning systems also play an important role in ensuring the safety of the population.

Crises are on the rise, wars, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, floods, landslides – disasters and climate change are currently omnipresent and increasingly lead to dangerous situations where the population must be warned as early as possible. Outdated or missing infrastructures can lead to tragedy, as unfortunately happened in the Ahr Valley (Germany). The cities & municipalities are aware that they have to ensure the system-relevant, critical infrastructures for disaster control. In the event of an emergency, reliable communication systems are important so that the population as well as the emergency personnel receive the relevant information quickly. In a disaster, every second counts.

The good news: 99% of all sirens in Switzerland work perfectly, as the siren test on 1 February 2023 proved – but on-site repairs are very costly and should not remain a status quo – this is precisely where we come in. Digitalisation and connection to the Internet of Things (IoT) is the next logical step. In Switzerland, the sirens are already connected to the national remote control system Polyalert, remotely controlled and monitored.

Our first IoT communication solution will be launched this year and is aimed at industrial and special projects as well as emergency meeting points and emergency alerting solutions. Here, redundancy is desired in addition to manual triggering or activation via a third-party system. With our new communication app, sirens can be triggered safely anywhere and at any time. With push notifications, behavioural instructions and information can be sent in real time via the app or via e-mail, SMS, pager or voice message to emergency and rescue forces in order to prepare them quickly and efficiently for the upcoming operation.

The IoT project will be expanded in the future. Predictive maintenance, over-the-air software updates and analyses and evaluations are to become possible in the near future. This could also be of great importance for the already more than 3200 civil protection sirens in Switzerland. These systems can be retrofitted with IoT technology. Thanks to IoT networking, the physical sirens become “digital twins”. The status data can be visualised in real time via a central dashboard (real-time monitoring). This enables automatic fault detection and fast reaction based on the best data available. In addition, the sirens can be remotely controlled, monitored and new functionalities can be added via central software upgrades over-the-air via IoT. Software upgrades save travel, only the replacement of parts takes place on site.