NERIS Platform
FSRI / UL Research Institutes · Lead Software Engineer · 2022-Present
The Situation
The U.S. had no unified system to collect, analyze, and visualize fire department incident data across all 50 states. Data was fragmented across thousands of local departments, making national-scale analysis impossible and leaving policy decisions uninformed by real evidence.
Why It Mattered
Without a national data platform, fire departments couldn't benchmark performance, identify emerging threats, or allocate resources effectively. Every year, critical patterns in fire incidents went undetected. Policy makers were flying blind, and the cost was measured in lives and property lost to preventable incidents.
The Approach
Architected the front-end for NERIS, a national platform aggregating incident data. Built progressive data loading patterns that render complex visualizations in under 2 seconds, even on 3G connections. Translated government stakeholder requirements into scalable technical solutions, working alongside a team of researchers, programmers, data scientists and other subject matter experts to process near real-time public safety reporting.
The Result
Deployed across all 50 states, processing 1M+ data points. Achieved near realtime visualization rendering on constrained networks. Enabled data-driven decisions at a local abd national scale for the first time at this speed and accessibility.
The NERIS platform represents a first-of-its-kind initiative: a national data infrastructure for fire department incident reporting that enables evidence-based policy at federal scale.
By implementing progressive data loading and optimized rendering pipelines, the platform delivers complex data visualizations to users across varying network conditions — from high-speed office connections to rural 3G — without sacrificing interactivity or accuracy.
The collaboration between engineering, government stakeholders, and data science teams required translating complex policy requirements into technical specifications, ensuring the platform serves both technical analysts and policy decision-makers.