## 4 Societal Benefits and Impact
### Enhanced Emergency Response  
In addition to mitigating accidents and health-related incidents, IoPVT-based outdoor safety monitoring has the potential to redefine the emergency and response landscape. Traditionally, emergency services depend on delayed or incomplete information, such as calls from people who witnessed accidents, on-site assessments, and best guesses about conditions, before they can dispatch resources. This lag in situational awareness frequently results in slower response times, suboptimal allocation of emergency personnel, and problems with coordination across agencies and geographies.  
However, in the face of this challenge, emergency responders obtain near-instantaneous access to critical information by linking next-generation sensors, HAR algorithms, and immersive virtual environments in the Metaverse [12,92]. The continuous flow of real-time environmental sensor data can detect structural failures or accelerating rises in floodwater to HAR systems, identifying individuals who have fallen or are showing signs of physical distress. Using this continuous instant-sensing data stream, IoPVT-based outdoor safety monitoring systems realize incident location and categorization in seconds for emergency operations centers. This accelerated detection process shortens the interval between onset and intervention, potentially saving lives and reducing the severity of injuries or property damage.  
In urban environments like Montreal for example, a hazardous icy staircase incident would no longer rely solely on bystanders reporting the event. Instead, the system's advanced analytics would recognize a high-risk condition or an actual fall, automatically alerting local emergency services and dispatching rescue teams to the exact location. Meanwhile, Metaverse-based visualization tools allow dispatchers and responders to navigate a real-time digital twin of the scene, assessing hazards, planning safe routes for paramedics, and anticipating what equipment might be necessary [93]. In rural settings, where distances between facilities and incidents can be long, this improved situational awareness translatesinto more efficient resource deployment and coordinated efforts across fire departments, ambulance services, and community-based first aid responders.  
Furthermore, in coastal areas vulnerable to climate impacts, such as storm surges or flash flooding, linking IoPVT data with meteorological and oceanographic modeling provides emergency managers with actionable information. By simulating different response strategies in the Metaverse, decision makers can strategically preposition medical units, rescue boats, and shelters to ensure assistance immediately reaches vulnerable populations quickly and safely. Over time, historical data can be used, as well as lessons learned, to determine how to utilize the data to fine-tune evacuation protocols, predict impact zones, and recommend resilience-building measures to local authorities.  
Ultimately, systems like HARISM have two-fold impacts on emergency response. They will improve immediate reaction time and strategic decision making during crises and lay a foundation for continuous improvement in _preparedness_ and _resilience_. As this cycle of informed action and subsequent learning continues, communities become better equipped to handle emergencies, strengthening public trust in the systems designed to protect them and reinforcing the collective safety net for current and future generations.