Safer Cities Creating a Better Life For the first time in history, there are more people around the world living in cities than people in rural areas. While the global migration to urban areas is improving their living standards, health, and financial prosperity, it also brings challenges to a city’s infrastructure, resources, security procedures, and emergency response systems. Meeting these challenges will be critical to the success of cities in the decades that follow. The safe city concept has been developed precisely to help government stakeholders, city mayors, and police departments mitigate these challenges. Leveraging the internet of things (IoT) and the connectivity now found in core security and safety technologies, safe city solutions are providing a range of systems including predictive analytics and big data, real-time response procedures and emergency response systems. These solutions are enabling governments and police departments to better protect their citizens from everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters. They are also supporting wider city organizations such as public health, fire and rescue, border control and social services to better serve their citizens. Safe cities create a better life The safe city concept is based on a consolidated ICT platform which combines public-safety information of different types and from different sources, obtained through sensors and multi-agency collaboration. Safe cities are an essential pillar supporting the development of smart cities throughout the world. They provide the security and safety required to protect citizens from crime and terrorism as well as mitigate, as much as possible, the impact of natural disasters and other threats. A successful safe city solution should support a city’s security agencies, fire and rescue departments, public health and social service departments before, during and after an event, and integrate the disparate technologies and government departments responsible for citizen safety.he safe city concept is based on a consolidated ICT platform which combines public-safety information of different types and from different sources, obtained through sensors and multi-agency collaboration. Four major requisites Prevention: It provides reliable and comprehensive security measures to predict threats and hazardous situations. City authorities must be able to take measures to prevent threats from occurring in the first place. Simulation and forecasting technology, based on big data mining, can help the relevant authorities to predict public threats and support police and military assets to prevent the event before it begins. Detection: It aids to public-safety organizations in collecting, sharing and analyzing data more effectively to provide early warnings and raise situational awareness. Sensor systems in the city will proactively gather information. These sensors may include video surveillance cameras, CBRNE (Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) sensors, gunshot-detection sensors, and weather sensors. The type of sensor used is determined by the scope of the safe city project and how much inter-operability is required. Information can be used to provide early detection and alerts when events occur. Increasingly, sensors include ‘listening’ to social media for relevant posting by netizens. Response: It enables the key organizations in the city to react to security threats in real time. City authorities must be able to prevent an adverse event from escalating. Safe city projects enable an effective response by using a consolidated ICT platform to provide a common operational picture to all relevant agencies, including law enforcement, public health, fire and rescue services; and to allow the critical communication systems of these agencies to inter-operate. This helps to raise the situational awareness for each of the responding agencies, and their command, control and coordination. Recovery: It provides post-event examination and analysis, identify victims and provide assistance in rescue actions. After an event, city authorities must be able to quickly examine and analyze all data received from the relevant sensor systems. This supports the subsequent search for suspects as well as the process of building a case based on incriminating evidence. Information can also be used to facilitate rescue actions, and the identification and assistance processes for both victims and survivors. Integration The safe city concept typically promotes inter-operability across law enforcement, emergency services and other government agencies (public health, border control, social services) to streamline operations and provides ‘situational awareness’ to all stakeholders involved in the management of a city’s security. This approach fosters better cooperation and sharing of intelligence. While much of the emphasis of the ‘safe city’ discussion involves security technology implementation and investment, the operational procedures and ICT backbone are just as important in the solutions’ ultimate success or failure. This reality means that ICT and security agencies must work together for the greater good of the safe city project. One cannot exist without the other. The size of the city does not impede its ability to be considered a safe city but differing city sizes require different levels of technology investment, stakeholder ‘buy-in’ and planning. Safe city solutions are often layered on top of the legacy infrastructure that is in place. Overall, detailed planning around the use of legacy technology and the need for new infrastructure are key considerations when deploying safe cities. Market drivers There are a number of market drivers that government agencies need to consider when deciding how to proceed with a safe city project. These can be broadly grouped as safety drivers, social drivers and economic drivers, and the government investment in safe cities has a positive impact on each of them. Safety drivers: at its core, a safe city addresses issues related to crime and terrorism. Often, these types of incidents cause regulations surrounding data privacy and national security to shift. For instance, after the September 11th attacks, the United States Congress passed the Patriot Act, which set up fusion centers to surveil and aggregate vast amounts of data including video surveillance streams, social media, arrest records, warrants and even mug shots. These centers, now known as ‘Intelligence Fusion Centers,’ are becoming increasingly important, as agencies emphasize predictive policing. Social drivers: Political motives are a key driver of safe city projects. Politicians can use safe city initiatives to generate support in their campaigns with citizens who are concerned about…
