Insights by PwC Smart Cities are Safe Cities
Introduction The world has never been smaller than it is today, and cities across the world are evolving faster than ever before. Digital technologies connect people in real time across thousands of miles, transforming a huge array of human interactions, including how we work, govern, interact, and where we live. The advantages are incontestable: targeted growth, productive innovation and richer, more fulfilled lives. At the same time, however, this unprecedented urban growth and digitisation is straining city resources including space, physical and social infrastructure. Criminal activities and terrorism have become a major concern that presents communities and neighborhoods with new security problems. The risks are self-evident and considerable, but the same factors that create these risks can also provide some of the answers. For example, the volumes of data generated by smart city infrastructure and the technological breakthroughs that make it easier for criminals to move data or illicit goods also give governments the tools that can enhance monitoring and surveillance and enable pre-event prediction and warning. Given the complexities of the landscape – virtual and physical – and the accelerating pace of change, what can governments and law enforcement agencies do to optimise security management and governance?
Snapshot: What defines a “smart city”? A smart city is a holistic ecosystem where a robust digital and social infrastructure interconnects people as well as organisations. Smart cities enable effective engagement with its citizens and processes that reduce of cost and resource consumption. Smart cities are the way ahead for managing increasingly complex urban flows. They hold the potential to move towards enhanced insight and decision making, hence allowing for real time responses to challenges in security and law enforcement.
Safety in a Smart City As with so many other areas of businesses, data and digital technology have the potential to change the game in law enforcement. Safe city architecture rests on the following building blocks:
Data centres and command viewing centres Integrated surveillance network Social infrastructure
Analytics capabilities
Integrated surveillance network
Intelligent incident detection that leads to a prompt response Capturing and compiling data from a wide range of sources in real time is the lifeline of a safe city program, especially if the data pertains to an incident leading to a security threat. Safe city solutions today incorporate a wide array of digital surveillance systems, including high-definition CCTV cameras, infrared radars, intrusion detection Snapshot: Video analytics and intelligent incident detection systems, handheld devices or simply an incident reported by a vigilant The effectiveness of a surveillance system depends on its video citizen through a mobile or social analytics capability. Intelligent video surveillance uses software media. A reliable and secure digital to automatically identify specific objects and behaviours in video network makes up the backbone of the footage (for example, from CCTV systems). There are extensive system, connecting the surveillance powerful video analysis methods and tools that are deployed systems to command viewing in a number of application domains, including surveillance centres and data centres, providing a and security applications. These open up avenues for motion communication infrastructure that is detection, facial recognition, licence plate recognition and essential for first-responder efforts. detection of gun shots, fire alerts, and risky crowding alerts.
Data centres and command viewing centres Real time information collection and processing Data centres are the heart of surveillance-based safe city projects. The data centre acts as a warehouse for the data collected from the surveillance sensors. The data centre is also responsible for providing continuous, real-time data to the command viewing centres for seamless, efficient and effective operations. This centre hosts all the applications that are required by the agencies to operate systems like the video management software and the analytics application (VMS, VA), the automatic number plate recognition application (ANPR), and the automatic vehicle classification. The design of a data centre for a safe city primarily depends on the type of operations that are envisaged by the security agency in a safe city project and the type of processing required on these feeds: indexing, pattern analysis, video analytics, facial recognition, etc. A command viewing centre (CVC) is an infrastructure that accesses the integrated information available at the data centre. CVCs are ideally equipped with an intelligent operations capability to ensure integrated data visualisation, real-time collaboration and deep analytics that can help the agencies prepare for problems, coordinate and manage response efforts, and enhance the ongoing efficiency of city operations.
Analytics capabilities Data-driven decisions and predictive policing The best in class agencies are the ones which transform this avalanche of data into an asset to draw insights. It is crucial that analytics tools are available to assist the agencies in the analysis and retrieval of crucial information from the captured data for pattern analysis, event search, and video retrievals. Information once retrieved in the desired format shall help in proactive planning and decision making. Dashboard reporting will allow agencies to use the available information better, and improve the strategic and tactical decisionmaking including anticipation, prevention, and resource deployment during crises. The primary goal is to learn from past experience and enhance integrated operations and monitoring, enable pre-event prediction and warning, intra-event surveillance and command, as well as postevent retrospective analysis and evaluation. This manner of policing can help answer questions like the following: • What are the kind of security incidents that are likely to happen in a certain locality? • What are the attributes and behavioural traits that make a person more prone to criminal activity? • What are the social (people demographics, infrastructure), and economic patterns (GDP, oil prices, unemployment rates) which influence crime?
Snapshot: Predictive analytics What if authorities could predict a crime even before it happens? Predictive analytics is a class of analytics that answers the question of “what could happen”, based on what has already happened in the past. Smart cities can provide the breadth of data required for such analysis. Predictive models learn from large volumes of historical data to identify the key factors that lead to different incidents and outcomes, and in turn, are able to predict future incidents based on the state of the contributory factors. Anomaly detection, for instance, has long been used in the financial and cybersecurity domain to detect potentially fraudulent transactions – this approach is based on the idea that transactions deviating majorly from a customer’s usual activity could potentially be anomalous.
Conclusion
Social infrastructure Bringing it all together Any safety initiative is incomplete without considering the “people aspect” – policymakers, civil and social agencies, and the citizens themselves. Various cities across the world now have collaborative monitoring platforms where citizens can warn each other as well as the agencies to report incidents and raise concerns. Governments are becoming smarter and leveraging social media to understand the needs of their citizens better. This has led to the advent of a form of “social collaborative policing”. Clearly, any city on a journey to become smart has to undergo extensive change management. At the same time, capacity building is essential to bring the actual users of the digital surveillance and analytical systems up to speed so as to effectively leverage on insights to make smart decisions.
Data and analytics holds the potential to completely transform the way governments manage security. With increased digitisation, policy makers and law enforcement agencies have more data on hand than ever before – this not only enables more effective monitoring, but makes it possible to predict crime before it happens and take proactive measures. In a world that’s becoming more interconnected than ever, the ultimate level for a smart city is ‘self-actualisation’: when cities are willing to share their experiences to help other cities advance and are also exploring new paradigms and setting new standards for quality of life. The way ahead is for agencies across cities and countries to step up and share technology and insights to promote the wellbeing of their citizens.
Contact
James LARMER Data & Analytics Leader, South East Asia PwC Singapore +65 6326 3005 james.larmer@sg.pwc.com
Vincent LOY Asia Pacific Financial Crime, Cyber and Data & Analytics Leader PwC Singapore +65 6326 7498 vincent.j.loy@sg.pwc.com
SEE Lay Eng Project Director INTERPOL World Event Manager +65 6389 6613 layeng.see@interpol-world.com
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