building safer communities in the digital age

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1 Smarter Cities: Public Safety in the Digital Age Industry Perspective

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As governments are faced with shrinking budgets and resources, public safety officials are tasked to deliver mission value in new ways. “Agencies simply cannot afford to put more officers on the street. They need to make improved decisions and allocate resources more effectively. Leveraging crime analytics is part of the solution in a time of tight budgets and resources,” states Mike Reade, Public Safety Specialist, IBM® Smarter Cities Team. The GovLoop and IBM report explores the variety of crime analytics applications agencies are adopting. The various applications reflects how agencies are looking to align analytics to core mission functions. http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/smarter-cities-building-safer-communities-in-the-digital-age

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Building Safer Communities in the Digital Age

Public Safety in the Digital Age 1

Smarter Cities:

Public Safety in the Digital Age

Industry Perspective

Page 2: Building Safer Communities in the Digital Age

IBM Industry Perspective1

“Agencies simply cannot afford to put more officers on the street. They need to make improved decisions and allocate resources more effectively. Leveraging crime analytics is part of the solution in a time

of tight budgets and resources.”

Mike Reade, Public Safety Specialist, IBM® Smarter Cities Team

Page 3: Building Safer Communities in the Digital Age

Public Safety in the Digital Age 2

reventing crime is vital to developing vi-brant and safe communities. As govern-ments are faced with shrinking budgets

and resources, public safety officials are tasked to deliver mission value in new ways. “Agencies simply cannot afford to put more officers on the street. They need to make improved decisions and allo-cate resources more effectively. Leveraging crime analytics is part of the solution in a time of tight budgets and resources,” states Mike Reade, Public Safety Specialist, IBM® Smarter Cities Team.

The variety of crime analytics applications reflects how agencies are looking to align analytics to core mission functions. Existing use cases for crime ana-lytics includes:

COMBATING RECIDIVISM by understanding and focusing on serious and prolific offenders

PREDICTING AND PREVENTING crime be-fore it happens

ENHANCING SITUATIONAL AWARENESS for officers through social media analytics or

video analytics to detect suspicious activity as events unfold

Providing REAL-TIME INSIGHTS through GIS technology and geo-tagged crime data to de-liver knowledge on surrounding locations and identify potential escape routes

OPTIMIZING resource deployment and mea-suring outcomes of decisions and crime-fight-ing initiatives

These examples provide only a snapshot of how analytics is being applied in law enforcement. One specific case study comes from the Miami-Dade County Police Department’s Blue PALMS initiative. Blue PALMS, or Predictive Analytics Lead Modeling Software, leverages crime analytics to break cold cases, and catch repeat offenders of crimes. When a crime is committed, an officer collects informa-tion that is captured in the Blue PALMS model. Blue PALMS uses advanced analytics to generate a list of potential suspects based on match prob-ability. This list is then delivered to investigators to narrow their focus from thousands of known

Smarter Cities: Public Safety in the Digital Age

Page 4: Building Safer Communities in the Digital Age

IBM Industry Perspective3

offenders to those with the highest probability of having committed the crime. Blue PALMS provides stronger leads to investigators by leveraging his-torical crime patterns and offender modus ope-randi from huge volumes of data.

Although the Blue PALMS program and related examples highlight common ways of using crime analytics applications, organizations define crime analytics in different ways to meet mission de-mands. David Edwards, Global Public Safety Offer-ing Manager, IBM Smarter Cities, states, “I define crime analytics as the effort being taken by police departments to collect, synthesize and develop in-sights from all sources of public and private data that they can get access to.” Expanding upon Ed-wards’ definition, crime analytics serves as an um-brella term and includes various analytic applica-tions. A few examples are highlighted below:

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYTICS mine historical data to categorize, classify, and group informa-tion in order to reveal patterns, trends and performance.

PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS involves a variety of statistical techniques to model data and analyze historical crime, event, geographic, demograph-ic and other data to predict the likelihood of crime before it happens.

ENTITY ANALYTICS focuses on improving the accuracy and consistency of data across disparate data sets by resolving identity, event and location records. For instance, a criminal might go by several names and aliases within a records management system and across other datasets, and may be a witness to one crime while being the victim in another. Entity analyt-ics will connect the dots between the data to form a complete profile of a criminal, address or object (such as a vehicle). Entity analytics solutions will also find the non-obvious rela-tionships between persons, objects, locations and events that is only possible when the rela-tionships between resolved identity packages are identified.

CONTENT ANALYTICS unlocks valuable data that is trapped in narratives, case files and oth-

Blue PALMS, or Predictive Analytics Lead Modeling Software, initiative from the Miami-Dade County Police Department provides stronger leads to investigators by leveraging

historical crime patterns and offender modus operandi from huge volumes of data.

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Public Safety in the Digital Age 4

er documents. Semantic and context analysis of unstructured text allows the volumes of in-formation captured this way to be utilized as effectively as database information in order to identify new insights.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS provides a con-stant stream of information. By leveraging this highly unstructured data in real time using streaming social media analytics, officers are able to identify and locate potential threats and evolving events, find evidence through photos, or track down witnesses.

INTELLIGENT VIDEO ANALYTICS can help identify events and spot patterns of behavior in real time. In addition to providing alerts and improving situational awareness, video analyt-ics provides event and pattern classification to dramatically improve forensic search from huge volumes of stored video.

In a fast moving, data-driven world, the key is that agencies focus on specific mission needs and align technology to achieve mission goals. Even though agencies are operating in a time of restrictive bud-gets and dwindling resources, crime analytics is al-lowing agency personnel to be more responsive and efficient to combat crime. “Most agencies are interested in using analytics to better inform their personnel in a more efficient and effective way,” states Reade.

With robust crime analytics, information can be delivered to officers in a more timely and accurate manner. Through this critical information sharing, officers are gaining advanced insights to improve situational awareness. “Analytics can deliver infor-mation to officers so they know what risks they might be encountering. Analytics can inform offi-cers of known individuals in the area they should be on the lookout for, which can help the officer be better prepared,” states Reade.

Likewise, investigators are tracking stronger leads, and departments are witnessing new efficiencies by placing officers at the right spot, at the right time. Above all, crime analytics is creating new insights through data analysis. Organizations can spot trends and correlations by testing multiple variables against one another.

Ultimately, by implementing a crime analytics solu-tion, new workplace efficiencies are found. Reade states, “Analytics reduces the administrative bur-den on officers, investigators and analysts so they can spend more time doing what they do best.” This means more time working on leads, patrol-ling and participating in community based initia-tives, and spending less time searching databases, requesting information and making sense of some-times conflicting reports.

Although the benefits are clear, new efficiencies can only be met if an agency aligns analytics to its core mission needs. Due to organizational size and ingrained operating procedures, this process is of-ten challenging for agencies to adopt. “Organiza-tions need to view crime analytics as a core part of their business,” states Edwards, he continues, “reorienting the organization around analytical in-sights is the hardest part.”

“ANALYTICS CAN DELIVER INFORMATION TO

OFFICERS SO THEY KNOW WHAT RISKS THEY

MIGHT BE ENCOUNTERING. ANALYTICS CAN

INFORM OFFICERS OF KNOWN INDIVIDUALS

IN THE AREA THEY SHOULD BE ON THE LOOK-

OUT FOR, WHICH CAN HELP THE OFFICER BE

BET TER PREPARED.”Mike Reade, Public Safety Specialist,

IBM® Smarter Cities Team

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IBM Industry Perspective5

Edwards is alluding to the cultural challenges of leveraging crime analytics for public safety agen-cies. Analytics requires organizations create new organizational policies and infrastructures around analytics to meet mission goals.

In addition to overcoming culture challenges, ana-lytic solutions depend on accurate and high quality data. As police officers are often entering infor-mation from a variety of devices and inputs, and sometimes into multiple databases, data quality has become an issue for public safety administrators.

As Reade states, “Data governance starts with es-tablishing policy and enforcing policy in regards to capturing information. For instance, an officer could enter information for ‘208 Maine Avenue’ and mistakenly enter ‘208 Main Street.’” Combine this with the criminals’ deliberate attempts to obfuscate their identities, and multiply these er-rors over an entire force and many years, and data

quality will suffer. With inaccurate data, even the most complex algorithms simply will not provide insights that can be trusted.

Data quality tools and entity analytics solutions can help to overcome these challenges, but the real goal is to train officers on the importance of data quality and governance. “Part of solving better data governance in law enforcement comes back to the person in the field understanding the im-pact of data accuracy and how it will come back to benefit them in the future,” states Reade.

In addition to showing the operational value of analytics to officers, public safety organizations must also assess the return on investment (ROI) of crime analytics. One example of how to mea-sure the ROI of crime analytics comes from the City of Lancaster, California.

In 2008, Lancaster hired James Kobolt as the first Senior Criminal Justice Analyst, tasked with lever-aging data in new ways to combat crime through data. Kobolt used IBM® SPSS® and Esri’s ArcGIS to explore how to fight crime through smarter, more innovative approaches. Lancaster public safety of-ficers estimated that roughly 35 percent of their time was spent on reducing Part I crimes, which is defined as murder and non-negligent homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, vehicle theft, larceny and arson.

By 2010, Kobolt had created predictive data mod-els that accurately showed crime patterns. Esri maps showed heat maps and color codes to show crime throughout the city. These maps have pro-vided the City of Lancaster with new insights and improved decisions how to allocate resources.

The results were staggering, as Lancaster wit-nessed a 37 percent decrease in crime from their benchmark set in 2007. Working with Nucleus Re-

In addition to showing the operational value of analytics to officers, public safety organizations must also assess the return on investment (ROI) of crime analytics, as they did in Lancaster, CA.

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Public Safety in the Digital Age 6

search Inc., IBM set out to understand the ROI for the City of Lancaster, the findings include:

Lancaster saw a 35 percent reduction in Part I crimes in 2010 and a 42 percent reduction in 2011 compared to the 2007 benchmark rate

Over $800,000 savings in the partial year of 2010 when predictive analytics was implement-ed

By using predictive and geographic analytics, Lancaster was able to gain over a million dol-lars in productivity on a year-over-year basis

The City of Lancaster attained a ROI of 1301 percent in a payback period of 1.5 months af-ter implementing a SPSS and ArcGIS solution to fight crime

Although the City of Lancaster witnessed re-ductions in Part I crimes, the ROI of an analyt-ics solution extends far beyond just general crime statistics. “I see ROI at three levels, number one is the crime rate, second is personnel productiv-ity and finally the economic development impact from crime reduction,” states Jim Lingerfelt, Senior Consultant, IBM.

Lingerfelt continues, “We are doing some deeper thinking about a community and the way it is af-fected by crime. Crime is inextricably linked to economic development, so that fact alone demands a broader approach that includes social services agencies, schools, community groups and even get-ting involved in permitting and zoning.”

For public sector organizations to truly transform into modern institutions, agencies will be forced to adopt analytics as a core business function. Cur-rently, IBM is in the process of developing a police resource optimization engine that will give man-

agement the ability to see what the impact is by putting incremental resources in different parts of their police force.

This means that an administrator could add a de-tective to the robbery squad and see the impact on clearance rates for robberies. Alternatively, the administrator could add the resource to the pa-trol division and see the impact on response time. This is a way for police chiefs to make better in-cremental decisions that are based upon expected outcomes, rather than existing workloads.

Now, like never before, agencies must explore new and innovative ways to protect citizens. In order to do so, utilizing analytics is the way forward for agencies to combat crime with diminishing bud-gets and resources.

With inaccurate data, even the most complex algorithms simply will not provide insights that can be trusted.

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IBM Industry Perspective7

The world isn’t just getting smaller and flatter, it is also becoming more instrumented, inter- connect-ed and intelligent. As we move toward a globally in-tegrated economy, all types of governments are also getting smarter.

IBM provides a broad range of citizen centered so-lutions to help governments at all levels become more responsive to constituents, improve opera-tional efficiencies, transform processes, manage costs and collaborate with internal and external partners in a safe and secure environment.

Governments can leverage the unparalleled re-sources of IBM through IBM Research, the Center for the Business of Government, the Institute for Electronic Government and a far-reaching ecosys-tem of strategic relationships.

To learn more, visit ibm.com/smarterplanet/safety

GovLoop’s mission is to “connect government to improve government.” We aim to inspire public sector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 65,000 members, fostering cross-government collaboration, solving common problems and ad-vancing government careers. GovLoop is headquar-tered in Washington D.C with a team of dedicated professionals who share a commitment to connect and improve government.

For more information about this report, please reach out to Pat Fiorenza, Senior Research Analyst, GovLoop, at [email protected], or follow him on twitter: @pjfiorenza.

GovLoop 734 15th St NW, Suite 500 Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 407-7421 Fax: (202) 407-7501Twitter: @GovLoop

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