12 Spring / Printemps 2017 PulsePoint mobile application for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)-trained volunteers, to for- profit applications, e.g., BeOn secure group communication mobile application. The vast majority of these applications were developed with minimal or no coordination between the developing firms and the emer- gency responders community. Thishasledtonegligibleadoption. In April 2013, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) launched an online Application Community (AppComm) to collect and pro- mote mobile applications built for public safety in general and emergency responders in par- ticular [7]. Currently, this web- site includes more than 200 mobile applications. In addi- tion, AppComm provides design guides and best practices for mobile developers based on the works of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) [8] [9] [10] and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [11]. smartphone user spends more than 29 hours per month on the top five mobile applications cat- egories as shown in Table 1. Realizing the importance and use- fulness of smart mobile devices, a number of cities are taking steps towards equipping their emergency responders with these capable devices. For instance, New York Police Department (NYPD) has equipped all its offi- cers (36,000 officers) with smart- phones and equipped 2,000 police vehicles with tablets [4]. These devices allow police officers to see incoming 9-1-1 calls, access the city’s databases, and access a number of sources of informa- tion, like the Domain Awareness System (DAS), which is a mobile application that allows police officers to access surveil- lance cameras across the city. Canadian cities are following suit. In 2016, Toronto police ser- vice has released a roadmap for modernizing community safety. One of the major enablers of this modernization is smart mobile technology [5]. Similarly, Ottawa police are equipping their offi- cers with smart mobile devices as part of its technology road- map released in May 2016 [6]. This heightened adoption of smart mobile technology has led to a growing number of mobile applications built specifically for emergency responders. These include emergency reporting applications, team manage- ment and tracking applications, volunteer finder applications, and supplementary informa- tion applications (e.g., hazmat). These applications range from cause-driven applications, e.g., T his article reviews the technological, oper- ational, and economical attributes that should be considered during the design process of mobile applications for emergency responders. In part, these attributes were solicited from the works of NIST, APCO, and DHS. They are also based on our work on the operational requirements of a BuildingTactical Information System (BTIS) soft- ware solution that gives emergency responders necessary and suffi- cient building information while en route to an emergency scene [12]. The remainder of this article is organized as follows. Section II gives a summary of the differ- ent types of information that can be used by emergency respond- ers. Section III introduces the ten attributes that should be con- sidered during the design process of mobile applications. In section IV , these attributes are projected onto the aforementioned BTIS. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section V. II. Types of Information The ultimate objective of any mobile application is giving emer- gency responders necessary infor- mation at the right time and the right location. In general, emer- gency responders are interested in three types of information: static information, dynamic information, and inferred or calculated infor- mation [13]. These three types of information, shown in Figure 1, are discussed subsequently. II.1 STATIC INFORMATION This information does not change with time, or changes at a very slow pace. For instance, it includes a building’s address, entrance, floorplan, and location of fire panel. It also includes a person’s name, address, occupa- tion, and age. Currently, emer- gency responders access some of this information electronic- ally using vehicle-mounted Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) or verbally by calling dispatch. Existing records are often lim- ited to criminal records, civic addresses, and vehicle regis- tration. In general, emergency responders do not have (techno- logical) means or procedures to collect static information in electronic format. II.2 DYNAMIC INFORMATION This type of information changes with time on a frequent basis. For example, the readings of a fire alarm system or an access control system. It also include the whereabouts of emergency responders (e.g. inside a build- ing). Currently, emergency responders have very limited access to dynamic information. For instance, they can access the readings of a fire panel or the stream of a surveillance camera only on site, but not en route. They can track the locations of each other outdoors but not indoors. This limited access is due to two main reasons. First, limited availability of dynamic information, e.g. vast majority of buildings do not have intelligent monitoring and control systems. Figure 1: Different types of information that can be used by emergency responders. Search Engines, Portals and Social 10hr and 56 min Entertainment 10hr and 34 min Communication 3hr and 48 min Productivity and Tools 2hr and 16 min Commerce and Shopping 1hr and 33 min MOBILE APPLICATION CATEGORY AVERAGE HOURS SPENT PER MONTH Table 1: Average time users spend on the top five mobile applications Database of static information Smart mobile device carried by an emergency responder Analytical and Predictive Model Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Smart Homes Smart City Connected Vehicles Social Media Internet of Things (IoT)