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Industry voice: Digital technology is becoming a crucial element of policing in giving officers the advantages of knowing information before, after and in the moment writes Matt Bishop, CTO for Policing, Microsoft UK
Police officers are constantly confronted with the need to make quick decisions in potentially dangerous situations. It could be in response to a robbery, the sighting of a suspicious package, a report of domestic violence or the call to respond to the prospect of a gang fight.
Experience counts for a lot in making the right decision, but equally important is the availability of accurate and timely information that enables an officer to assess a situation, with an awareness of the circumstances and risks, then take action to diffuse a situation or apprehend an offender.
The demand extends to those in charge of operations: control rooms need to know how best to respond to an emergency call, whether they should despatch officers with specific skills and if they need to get another emergency service involved.
As digital technology has become more advanced it has increased the potential for police to make the right decisions. It cannot deal with all of those ‘heat of the moment’ challenges, but it can give officers a better chance to make the right call and do what’s best for public safety.
Data is an increasingly important tool in modern policing, providing three important assets for coppers on the beat: knowing before, knowing in the moment and knowing after.
Identifying risks
Knowing before enables police forces to identify the risks of trouble in particular neighbourhoods, or at events, or around specific groups or individuals. It helps them to target their resources and deploy officers so they will be better placed to respond quickly to incidents, or show the presence that can prevent them from blowing up at all.
The potential for this is growing as machine learning supports cloud based analytics, taking data from a range of sources – such as CCTV footage, automatic number plate recognition and signs on social media – to detect subtle patterns and obtain an advanced awareness of where crimes can take place or emergencies arise. Signs that would mean little individually can collectively trigger a suspicion or flag up increased risk to which officers can quickly respond.
Knowing in the moment can draw on the range of sensors and devices that are becoming more prevalent in communities. It can combine with geospatial information to give officers a greater situational awareness, so they know about the locality, features in the local streets and the hazards from traffic and crowd movements.
Even satellite data can provide an extra element in responding to fire, chemical or environmental incidents. It can all feed into analytics systems to provide first responders to emergencies with crucial information to shape their reactions.
The background information held in police systems can make an officer aware any factors affecting the individuals involved, and ensure they step in ready to deal with a person rather than an incident.
It can also give police control rooms an edge in shaping the response: assessing how many and which officers to despatch, whether they will need special equipment and if there is also a need for fire and rescue or ambulance services. It supports those quick decisions in allocating resources that often makes a big difference in dealing successfully with an emergency.
Investigations and prevention
Knowing after is a major element of investigating crimes or assessing what caused an incident and how to take preventative action in the future. New types of forensic systems are under development and the integration of data, supported by the increasing use of advanced algorithms, can spot the correlations and unearth evidence that would otherwise have been fractured between data pools.
The ability to pull together a wide range of data and analyse it quickly to provide meaningful insights is becoming a major tool in detecting crime, identifying suspects and taking measures to make communities less vulnerable.
Along with all this there is a need for the right balance in taking action while respecting individuals’ privacy and human rights. This is a difficult job for police forces when there is no clear legal framework, and will become more complex and demanding as they make more use of advanced data collection and analytics.
But as the boundaries are established it will be possible to programme the appropriate use of data into machine learning and analytics systems, and they will be able to fully exploit the technology in the cause of public safety. It will make it possible for police officers to use data within those boundaries in their decisions on what to watch, who to question and how to deal with potentially dangerous situations.
Until recently it has been beyond the available technologies to provide these three streams of data, but as cloud systems have become more sophisticated and wireless infrastructure more robust the potential has become a reality. It is now possible to pull all that data out of its silos and make it available in real time for officers on the beat and control rooms.
Aware solution
Microsoft has responded with the development of Aware, a solution for emergency responders using commodity cloud technology and drawing on the expertise of service providers to identify the streams of data and make it easily accessible to agencies.
Now they can begin to harness data from a wider landscape: from infrastructure, satellites, social media and agencies in public, private and third sectors. The provision of data on the beat is already an important element of policing, and it becomes more sophisticated and its insights more powerful it will become the lifeblood of modern policing.
Microsoft and its technology partners are making important contributions to the movement and are committed to working with police forces to further exploit data for public safety. You can learn more from here about how Microsoft Aware can support police forces in their efforts to ensure public safety.
To discuss how Microsoft Aware can help your force today you can contact msukservices@microsoft.com