Smart Public Safety Solutions (SPSS) have the potential to transform our emergency services. The ever-growing data sources have the ability to enable fast, accurate emergency response and crime prevention. It also provides new ways to keep workflows simple and intuitive while improving situational awareness which in turn has the ability to keep the officers and the public safe.

I believe 2016 will be the year when Smart Public Safety Solutions start to make a real change for public safety agencies.

From answering thousands of emergency calls and text messages to processing video, disparate evidence and records, SPSS integrate command centre, field officers and citizens' material and streamline operations.

One of the barriers to this transformation has been the ability to collect and disseminate the data. Feeds from cameras on the street, in buildings and increasingly from vehicles and body worn video devices need a mechanism to deliver their material to the systems that undertake the analytics. Once the analysis has taken place the ability to disseminate relevant information to targeted groups of front line officers, on the street, in the moments that matter, requires a communication network. And crucially this can’t be a fixed line network as officers are always on the move.

The continued evolution in mobile broadband is a key enabler to the transformations we are now seeing. Whilst voice remains the bedrock of mission critical communications it is no longer the only means of delivering and receiving information. Voice communication is now enriched with data. No longer do officers have to rely on a single pre-shift briefing or request someone back at the control room to access and relay information. They now, through the applications available and mobile broadband networks, can be kept up to date, moment by moment. The image of a missing child is no longer posted to the pin board in the station. In real time, as a call handler is alerted, a parent can upload an image from a smartphone to the control room and from the control room out to officers in the target, geo-fenced, area. The fixed or mobile cameras and sensors in this a area can be accessed by the control room systems and their videos analysed using facial recognition applications, all over broadband mobile networks.

Accessing ‘after the fact’ video and data to solve an incident whilst useful is not as beneficial as having access to real time material with the ability can change the trajectory of an incident in progress.

From reacting and responding to predicting and preventing, a transformation is happening in public safety. Having access to networks that can handle the huge increase in available data and deliver it to systems and advanced analytics applications that can predict where crimes may erupt and impact those in progress, technology is taking public safety police beyond crime mapping. By collecting and disseminating surveillance, local intelligence and real-time investigative tools, agencies are multiplying their capabilities and mitigating risks and the evolution of mobile data transmission is a key part of this ongoing evolution.

Want to know more? Download our new White Paper on Smart Public Safety Solutions.

David Parry is Director, EA Marketing.

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