User-Centered Design and Real-Time Geospatial Integration in Intelligent Mobile Platforms for Urban Fire Emergency Management

Urban fire emergency management in developing cities is constrained by delayed reporting, fragmented communication, and limited situational awareness. This study presents a user-centered, mobile–cloud emergency response platform that integrates real-time geospatial intelligence with asynchronous communication to improve fire incident reporting and response coordination. Using Port Harcourt Local Government Area (PHALGA), Nigeria, as a case study, the system was designed following human–computer interaction principles and implemented with a React Native mobile client, a Node.js backend, Socket.IO for real-time event synchronization, and cloud-hosted geospatial services. A Design Science Research methodology guided iterative design, implementation, and evaluation. Usability was assessed using the System Usability Scale (SUS), while operational performance was evaluated through geolocation accuracy, task completion time, response acknowledgment latency, and coordination efficiency under simulated and controlled field conditions. Results indicate a SUS score of 84 percent, average task completion time of 2.8 seconds, geolocation accuracy exceeding 95 percent, and substantial improvement in response coordination compared with manual reporting methods. The findings demonstrate that integrating user-centered design with real-time geospatial intelligence significantly enhances adoption, trust, and operational effectiveness of mobile fire emergency management platforms in resource-constrained urban environments. (User-centered design, mobile emergency systems, real-time geospatial integration, fire emergency management)