Quick-response security teams need to be agile when managing emergency response in security command centres and collaborating with public safety agencies. Multiple-faceted public safety incidents require automatic and immediate response due to their complexity, scale, and unexpected nature.
Both during and after an emergency, teams need help sifting through so much data to uncover insights. To accomplish this, agencies will need modern technologies to facilitate real-time collaboration, integration, and high-level communication.
According to Francisco Urdaz, Director of Business Development at Hexagon’s Safety, the solution lies on utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and the Cloud.
Currently, security and public safety agencies are either constrained by data silos or overwhelmed with information. By sharing data between organisations, agencies can alleviate these challenges by breaking down silos and providing staff with greater access to relevant information. AI ensures they receive the right data at the right time so they don’t feel overwhelmed.
Interoperability and a reluctance to share what can be sensitive data have been the main barriers to data sharing across organisations. Understandably, security and public safety teams are concerned about data misuse.
Using the cloud facilitates communication and collaboration between multiple organisations across regional and political borders efficiently and cost-effectively. Collaboration is much easier from this perspective and agencies have more control over data sharing as they can decide what to share, who can access it, and for how long.
Receiving data in different file formats can quickly become a burden and make it harder for teams to monitor the needed data, especially when most of it isn’t relevant. This is when AI comes in. Security personnel can filter the data collected by location, types of incidents, weapons used, license plates and specific keywords. They can then cut through the noise and only analyse the relevant information to the case at hand. They can set up multiple alerts regarding incidents with different priority levels and protocols and only share relevant information with public safety agencies.
Acting in real-time
As well as alerting the relevant emergency response teams, security personnel can start collecting information that will prepare teams that are arriving at the scene and can be kept on file as evidence. The collected and pieced data also helps paint a clearer picture of the incident so that teams understand the situation better. This helps solve issues and crimes in real time and limit the damage while the suspect is still on the scene, rather than waiting until much later to sift through historical data.
When it gets to the investigation phase, selecting tools improves security teams’ collaboration with the police. For example, link analysis makes better sense of the data. It identifies other types of leads that could be in the database that didn’t initially look related, such as reviewing criminal history from other jurisdictions and legacy CCTV footage. Being connected to multiple public safety agencies via the cloud means this information can be readily available, improving the workflow.
A crucial aspect of AI tools is that they are always looking at patterns in the data they’re monitoring, whether from CCTV footage or emergency calls. However, this doesn’t remove the need for human intelligence, as the security and emergency response teams must still make decisions based on available information. The software brings to attention patterns that aren’t easily visible to the human eye.
Dynamic digital integration
Overall, the collaboration between the security industry and public safety agencies requires dynamic integration to help them derive actionable insights from the data they’re collecting and respond accordingly.
The use of the cloud and AI technology is essential to get best-in-class results. The upscaling of these technologies will lead to swifter, more efficient security responses – and a higher level of protection for the general public.