Open Data Transforms Public Safety Outcomes and Creates New Opportunities

Increasing numbers of cities and countries around the world are learning the value of making government data pools open and available to the public. These initiatives create platforms for community engagement, stimulate innovative solutions to civic issues, and boost economic activity. Open data has been embraced by municipalities both as a mechanism to better respond to public safety emergencies and to more mundane, but equally resource-intensive tasks such as monitoring bylaw violations. For example, open data enables geospatial modelling of traffic violations to better allocate limited resources to hotspots around the municipality.  The growing success of these initiatives has led some governments to release data specifically focused on policing, traffic, critical infrastructure and other relevant categories in order to improve public safety.

While the concept of open data continues to gain traction, not all governments have successfully developed their open data initiatives. For example, the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI) was launched in 2011 to some fanfare, with analysts expecting that this initiative could lead to grassroots innovation in public safety. Instead, it faced considerable criticism because of its slow uptake. More specifically, public sector employees and municipal politicians actively resisted releasing high value municipal data, largely because the initiative lacked a clear policy framework to govern the release of data. Decision-making power over the release of open data was concentrated within the most difficult to reach executive branches of government, and these agencies typically worked in silos, resulting in inconsistent data formatting and different data release cycles. Uptake was therefore slow and inconsistent, and until KODI’s recent relaunch, it served as a cautionary tale indicating that simply building an open data portal is not sufficient to drive use and adoption.

The muddled open data policies hindering the performance of the KODI project contrast sharply with the policy framework that Chicago instituted alongside the launch of its own open data project. In 2012, the mayor of Chicago issued an open data executive order with the aim of creating an ‘unprecedented’ level of transparency and accountability.  This policy framework provided concrete guidelines for the dissemination of public data and immediately produced measurable results, amassing more than 16 million page views.

Three key provisions in Chicago’s policy contribute to its success:

• An open data advisory group, to be chaired by a Chief Data Officer, was established. (Chicago was, in fact, the first major municipality to appoint a CDO.)
• The advisory group oversees and coordinates the release of data from government agencies in consistent and cross-compatible formats.
• City agencies are mandated to provide an annual report to ensure their open data compliance.

The public safety data available through Chicago’s initiative includes hundreds of databases detailing longitudinal crime reports, information on policing districts, fire stations and more. The City of Chicago honors the applications developed using the open data that the City provides on its Digital Hub page. These public safety applications range from the relatively straightforward, measuring weather and water conditions on Chicago’s beaches or creating a visual map of current 311 requests, to the more complex, such as the SmartData Platform, which uses sophisticated analytics to enable leaders to see trends in crime and other public safety metrics.

The success of these applications demonstrates how a coherent policy framework that encourages the release of open data can produce positive change and measurable outcomes for public safety in the city. Additionally, these applications have the benefit of reducing the burden on city administration and streamlining otherwise cumbersome processes. Other jurisdictions around the world are following Chicago’s example in embracing the power of big data and analytics to create a measurable and positive impact on public safety.

Opportunities on the Horizon

Even as some municipalities embrace open data, many more struggle with harnessing the transformative power of big data. The success of these projects hinges on two guiding principles:  (1) creating effective partnerships between governments and businesses, and using them to ensure the expertise and technology necessary to facilitate widespread uptake and citizen buy-in, and (2) establishing a clear, transparent policy framework that makes data available for everyone to use.

Following these principles, cities can take a series of “next steps” to implement an effective open data program:

• Establish an advisory group to oversee and coordinate the release of open data. This approach bridges the gap between government agency ‘silos’ that proved disruptive in the rollout of Kenya’s open data project. Consider adding two levels of group membership: one which is comprised of city staff, and another which is comprised of technology partners and non-governmental agencies. Two layers of membership will ensure data validity and greater applicability.
• Ensure that data formatting is cross-compatible and interoperable for maximum usability. Leverage well-established standards such as ISO 8601 and upcoming standards such as ISO 37120. Network with other municipalities and advocate for widespread adherence to these standards during the data entry and data release processes. This will reduce data cleaning costs and help create open data compatibility across municipalities.
• Work with a set of trusted technology partners to develop a coherent open data policy, and use this opportunity to administer an ICT platform that marries disparate sources of data into a manageable and interoperable format.
• Increase automation in the process of producing open data. For example, automatically scan each data set and provide a statistical quality measurement score, then encourage and reward improvements to that score.

Adopting these measures will drive open data progress and innovation. As the field of smart public safety brings stakeholders from multiple municipal bodies together, partnerships formed can lead to new opportunities to improve public safety and address issues that cross municipal borders, such as weather emergencies. As cities in developing and developed countries continue to realize the potential of open data for improving public safety, they will be most successful when working with partners to aid them in in their transformation into smart cities. 

Body Cams: Extending the Point of Impact of Intelligent Video Analytics

The concept of smart public safety involves applying data management, analysis, and collaboration processes to multiple types of data, to deliver deeper insight into all manner of things impacting public safety.  Digital video is information rich and it can be a critical source of insight. 

Video analytics is the technology to extract insight from digital video.  It tags video images creating data and applies advanced analytics to that data, which can be either archival or streaming in real time.  The power of video analytic solutions is that they have the capabilities to recognize and analyze events that humans may miss.  Adding these capabilities to collaboration technology can complements traditional law enforcement and emergency management skills.  Video analytics can deliver targeted intelligence to improve situational awareness to front line personnel.  Moreover, it can help them identify threats in real-time, as well as detect patterns that can help predict, and ultimately prevent, crimes. 
  

The New Frontier of Digital Video

Video surveillance data can derive from many sources, including archived footage, stationary cameras, sensors and, increasingly, field units such as dashboard cameras (“dash cams”) and body worn video (“body cams”).  Body cams are the new frontier of digital surveillance video and have the potential to be critical components of smart public safety programs. 

These devices were first introduced in the mid-2000s in select European cities in Great Britain and Denmark.  Adoption in North America began a few years later, gaining increased momentum in the past two years across the U.S and Canada.  A 2014 study of the 100 most populous cities in the U.S. found that 41 have deployed body cams to at least some of their officers, while an additional 25 cities have plans to deploy them. Some of the cities leading this charge include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Washington, DC.  Similarly, police forces in large Canadian cities such as Calgary, Toronto and Edmonton are leading the country’s efforts in deploying body cams to their officers.   

Benefits, Concerns and Solutions

The benefits attributed to body cams include increasing officer accountability, reducing use-of- force incidents, reducing citizen complaints against officers, and decreasing attacks on officers.  These benefits suggest that police and citizens are reacting positively to this new dimension of public safety.  Body cams remind police and citizens that they are being observed, inducing a state of heightened self-awareness that broadens their perspective.  The mere presence of a body cam on an officer can help deescalate tense situations and cool down confrontations. 

At the same time, citizen groups and police associations have raised concerns about the use of body cams by officers.  Both cite privacy issues that need to be discussed, understood and guaranteed in accord with civil rights.  Under what circumstances, for instance, can video be made public?  What’s the balance between privacy for citizens and transparency for police?  There is no consensus approach now, but guidelines and regulations are under discussion so it is only a matter of time before a social and regulatory solution emerges.

Another issue with body cams is the cost of the devices themselves, and of storing the massive data files that accumulate.  Here, a technical solution may help address the issues.  By combining body cams with video analytics, public safety organizations can gain additional value from the devices and offset the costs of using them.  Applying analytics to body cam generated video, for instance, can increase situational awareness for the officers on the ground, potentially saving property and lives.  It can also guide commanders’ decisions to deploy personnel most effectively in response to real-time updates in a given situation.  This combination can also increase the efficiency of existing resources, enabling one person to do the work of many.  Ultimately, body cams + video analytics can be a force multiplier for police commanders.

Improving Public Safety with First Person Technology

Adding the first person perspective of body cams with the insight delivered by video can be a powerful enabler of smart public safety.  Right now, we’re at the earliest stages of exploring the capabilities and value afforded by this combination.  As the adoption of body cams spreads and the concerns around the technology are addressed, the benefits will increase.

Much of this new, emergent value is likely to be found when the insight derived from body cam digital video is merged with other tools, such as department- and city-wide operational dashboards that help manage resources, facilitate decisions, and coordinate action.  The promise of video analytics is compelling, and when combined with first-person technology such body cams, it has the potential to vastly improve the way cities maintain public safety.