health & care services

Digital tools are reshaping emergency response in Lemgo, where a location tracking solution uses real-time maps of incidents and team positions to make coordination easier, more reliable, and transferable to other regions.

Key takeaways

• Start with real user needs: The project originated from an on-the-ground problem identified by local emergency teams.
• Keep it simple: Minimal, easy-to-use features ensure adoption by volunteer organizations with limited IT expertise.
• Collaboration is key: Success depended on cooperation between city administration, German Red Cross and local startups.
• Use open-source for scalability: Making the tool free and open enables replication and adaptation in other regions at low cost.
• Iterative testing matters: Real-life pilots (e.g. Christmas market) were essential for refinement and validation.
• Small improvements can save lives: Cutting 30 seconds from emergency response time demonstrated measurable and impactful success.

In Lemgo, Germany, digital innovation is changing how emergency services operate. A smart location tracking system now visualises incidents and team positions in real time, enabling faster, more reliable coordination. As Nicole Baeumer from the Smart City project digital.interkommunal Kalletal.Lemgo shares, what began as a simple, local idea has evolved into a scalable open-source solution that shows how digital tools can make a measurable difference – even in seconds.

Lemgo and its neighbouring municipality Kalletal in North Rhine-Westphalia are part of the German federal funding program Model Projects Smart Cities (MPSC), which runs from 2021 to 2027. Their overall Smart City strategy focuses on five main areas: health, data-infrastructure-innovation, food, campus-quarter-living, and environment. Within this framework, more than twenty subprojects have been developed, including Smarte Einsatzkrõfteortung - digital.interkommunal, aimed at improving public health and safety..

During major local events, the German Red Cross provides on-site medical services. Until recently, coordination between the control centre and first aid patrols relied on verbal radio messages – a process often slow and prone to error. On average, it took about forty seconds to dispatch a team, a delay that could be critical in emergencies.

To overcome this challenge, the Smart City Team, the German Red Cross, and the local startup Impact IT collaborated on a digital solution. The result is a web-based application that uses smartphones in medical backpacks equipped with the OwnTrack app for live location tracking. The control centre can see where patrols are in real time, upload custom maps such as Christmas market layouts, check device battery status, and mark key sites like hospitals or defibrillators. Simple and intuitive by design, the tool is easy to use even for volunteers with limited technical experience.

First tested during Lemgo’s annual “Kläschen” Christmas Market in 2023 and 2024, the system proved remarkably effective: average response times dropped from forty seconds to just ten. A thirty seconds improvement may seem small, but in an emergency, it can be life-saving. Encouraged by positive feedback, the team has since refined and expanded the system to other events and organisations.

Open by design, the solution is freely available on platforms such as OpenCode and GitLab, complete with installation guides, user manuals, and adaptation instructions. Its open-source model ensures transparency and makes replication in other cities straightforward and affordable.

This event is part of the ISCN Global Mixer, a series of events organized by the International Smart Cities Network. The presentations cover a wide range of topics related to international smart city approaches and provide exciting insights into urban digitalization worldwide - in just 30 minutes.