Leveraging civilian IoT infrastructures to support warfighting activities in urban environments

In the last decade, governments and municipalities have been investing large amounts of money to improve the style and quality of life of Smart Cities' citizens. This led to a huge adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) installations producing a wide amount of data. To exploit at best the many advantages of the IoT, Smart Cities have also begun to make that data freely accessible through Open Data services. The combination of IoT and Open Data can bring benefits in different fields, including the military domain. More specifically, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) missions would significantly benefit from the integration of military systems with the civilian IT infrastructure of Smart Cities. In this context, the deluge of data generated by the IoT calls for dedicated solutions to analyze it and disseminate the results. This paper presents an evaluation of the capabilities of SPF, the Fog-as-a-Service platform we designed for tactical environments, in supporting a hypothetical but realistic HADR mission in the Helsinki Smart City. The paper demonstrates how the possibilities brought by the integration of SPF with the Open Data services offered by the city of Helsinki can significantly help the work of the emergency team, in particular with regards to the quick detection of clear and congested roads for relief organization and coordination.