Nicole Raimundo envisions a day when streaming video will be as routine a part of emergency response as stretchers and defibrillators.

Raimundo, who is the chief information officer for the town of Cary, North Carolina, believes high-quality live streams will redefine the way responders, caregivers and law enforcement authorities manage crises. Police departments across a region will be able to assess an emergency and dispatch officers accordingly. Doctors and nurses will diagnose injuries via high-definition video before patients reach the emergency room. Traffic control systems will automatically adjust stoplights and re-route traffic to speed emergency vehicles on their way.

“Imagine if you could string applications together so response happens all at once,” said Raimundo, who is leading efforts to implement such capabilities for Cary’s “smart cities” project.

The technology to enable these scenarios is theoretically in place today – but you wouldn’t want to depend on it. As anyone who has ever made a video call over a cellular network knows, fuzz-outs, freezes and dropped connections are par for the course. It’s the price we pay for sharing bandwidth with others, which is how wireless networks have always operated.

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