Challenge Statement

Richmond, an island city with a rapidly growing and diverse population and home of nationally significant infrastructure and government services, requires resilient physical and virtual platforms that are integrated seamlessly across all levels of government to enhance quality of life in day-to-day activities and minimize community impacts from major disasters.

Summary

Richmond is comprised of 17 islands at the mouth of the Fraser River, on the West Coast. A gateway to the Asia Pacific, over 65% of the population originates from Asia Pacific countries. Home to YVR, the Port of Vancouver, and 30 minutes from the US border, Richmond’s population, currently 220,000, is expected to reach over 300,000 with the City Centre population tripling, by 2041.

Multi-levels of government and businesses have incident response plans and activation protocols utilizing for communication technology, decision making, and asset mobilization/ movement during an incident. The challenge is systems are not currently interconnected and integrated. This impedes response efforts, resulting in nuisance for citizens with minor events or potentially more serious consequences associated with major events.

Richmond has invested in stable, reliable infrastructure and services as the basis for implementation of the Smart Cities Challenge. Citizen communication and built-in system resilience are essential to an integrated platform enabling data driven decision making to improve response rates and reduce recovery time.

Project goals: Protect our island city; Integrate citizen, infrastructure and emergency data and communication platforms; Bridge language barriers; and Create scalable systems that both enhance daily life and improve emergency response rates and recovery times.