On New Year’s Eve in 2016, a fire engulfed part of the Address Downtown hotel in Dubai, close to where revellers had gathered to watch a spectacular fireworks display. The incident was picked up by Pacific Controls, a data centre for buildings and infrastructure projects that had tied with the Dubai Civil Defence for real-time monitoring of buildings in the United Arab Emirates for any emergency alarms. In peak traffic, the blaze was put out in a couple of hours, and no fatalities were recorded.
The Pacific Controls company can monitor any alarm, from those for fires to those in elevators. A message is immediately sent to a command centre and a team is deployed. The system taps into the network of telecommunications company Etisalat, which provides a real-time tracker of any crises. Their track record is impressive. This is part of Dubai’s drive towards a smart city, which has seen the city push for real-time data for services across different departments. Data is stored on a cloud service, which is either a physical or virtual server. This is then controlled by a cloud-computing provider, such as Pacific Controls.