Public-Private Partnerships Gain New Momentum in Safe City Applications

Aug. 19, 2015
Collaboration between businesses, municipal leaders paramount to streamlining response, improving public safety

The worldwide population levels are growing at a rapid rate and urbanization drives new levels of inhabitants in large cities across the globe. The move from urban areas to cities compels municipalities to evaluate ways to boost efficiency and improve quality of life. With large and complex infrastructures serving millions of people, today’s cities are vulnerable to a wide range of threats such as overcrowding, criminal activity, terrorism and natural disasters. As a result, there is a growing trend toward the creation of citywide public safety programs to better protect people, property and assets.

As metropolitan areas grow, the need for valuable information expands, and municipal governments and agencies collect more data than ever before. It is critical that cities distill the most timely and relevant information to build strong security postures. Managed correctly, the data transforms into information that provides “actionable intelligence” and positions cities to realize valued insights that quickly lead to more effective decision-making. 

Safe and Secure City projects are growing and evolving, and one of the biggest additions to these initiatives is the addition of private-public partnerships. The ability to share critical data between public and private sectors helps drive new levels of safety and security. While it is certainly not a new phenomenon, public-private partnerships are growing in adoption — not just across North America but across the world. Private business and public safety agencies have united with the common goal of making cities better and safer places to live. Regardless of how these partnerships manifest, they are designed to expand awareness, enhance collaboration and increase the amount of information that can be gathered from a number of sources quickly and efficiently.

A Seat at the Table

The threats facing today’s cities and metropolitan areas are numerous. From naturally occurring events, such as severe weather and earthquakes, to the potential dangers posed by terrorist threats, the risk landscape is vast and dynamic. Manpower resources are stretched at many public safety agencies, which is why the participation of the private sector — either directly or indirectly — is a valuable addition to any Safe City program.

At the same time, cities today have access to more information than ever before — from surveillance platforms, crowdsourcing applications, video analytics and social media — that can streamline investigations, improve protection of critical assets and optimize business efficiencies. Timely and accurate sharing of all this information is vital during disasters and emergencies — it can make the difference between a successful or failed response.

Public-private partnerships are designed to allow both parties to benefit from information sharing and the exact make-ups of these agreements can come in many forms. In a simplistic approach, there may be a video-sharing agreement in place between businesses and law enforcement in which the organizations agree to share video footage as needed. More robust initiatives include the development of an agency to manage collaboration and focus on short- and long-term information sharing initiatives.

With a wide variety of information sources available, municipal agencies need a simple way to share and analyze incoming data to boost response times and keep citizens safe. Time is of the essence in most emergency situations, so finding a way to weed through the abundance of information and pinpoint useful intelligence in real time is imperative. To accurately assess risk and identify real threats to the general public, municipalities need information and management systems that can quickly and efficiently leverage the available material.

Technology sources, such as video management software, intelligent analytics, situational awareness platforms and audio recordings, allow cities to integrate critical data from disparate resources to provide officials with a holistic view of overall operations across the region and realize new levels of situational awareness during natural disasters, terrorist attacks or large events. Cities can track a suspect from a stadium to a subway station, onto the train or to a park across town with comprehensive video surveillance systems. With public-private partnerships, officials can even access surveillance data captured by private surveillance networks, such as retail and corporate facilities, or even participating residential properties. This approach allows officials to gain new levels of intelligence, and respond effectively to events no matter where they occur.

The Value of Collaboration

For many years, public-private partnerships were primarily conceptual because of concerns about privacy and the use of shared data. One of the largest and most common questions is, “Who has access to the data and for what purpose?” When multiple agencies are involved, this question is bound to evolve. Local government officials and legal teams can help address these concerns by establishing memorandums of understanding (MOUs), between agencies and private-sector organizations, enabling all parties to agree to share critical security and business data with one another, and implement best practices for data security and storage.

While there may not be a single standard or template to follow when establishing a public-private partnership, there are real-world examples that provide best practices for setting up such initiatives. The city of Guayaquil, the most populous city in Ecuador with more than 3.7 million people in its metropolitan area, developed a Safe City program through the Guayaquil Corporation for Public Safety, a non-profit corporation that coordinates public safety efforts within the city. The project started as a small pilot project and today boasts a robust public safety network that includes more than 800 public and private cameras. The solution helps ensure area safety and augments the efforts of security operations, law enforcement and first responders. City officials also leverage it for other applications such as traffic management and streamlined waste collection.

In Surat, India, the Gujarat state government spearheads the Safe City concept. The project is an ongoing collaboration between multiple stakeholders and private technology providers. Serving a population of approximately 4.4 million in an area that encompasses nearly 126 square miles, Surat city officials invested in the Safe City project to ensure the ongoing security of the area, while continuing to make it an attractive locale for business. Phase one of the project consisted of the specification and installation of more than 100 video surveillance cameras, which are used to monitor major traffic areas along critical entry and exit points in and around the city. Upcoming phases call for extending the video coverage within the city and increasing the number of surveillance locations to more than 5,000 by the project’s completion.

Ensuring Collaboration

Another specific challenge to public-private partnerships is how data from multiple sources and disparate devices can be presented in a unified format to enable operators to gain the most relevant and critical information. Security management software platforms, also known as situation management solutions, are valuable tools in addressing this challenge. These platforms can seamlessly tie multiple data sources together to present information in one unified interface, allowing operators to quickly identify situations and determine the appropriate response. This process transforms raw data into actionable intelligence.

Comprehensive technology solutions such as IP-based surveillance systems, video management software and situational awareness software provide easier and timelier access to data. The end result: greater situational awareness and stronger protection. For example, by integrating video content and social media through the use of communications and cyber intelligence, municipalities can proactively identify threats even before they occur — or perhaps, respond to and resolve incidents before they occur.

The growth in information technology and social media has presented new opportunities for public-private partnerships. Law enforcement and government agencies can use communications and cyber intelligence solutions to intercept, monitor and analyze communications to build the evidence needed to neutralize terrorism and crime. These solutions readily handle vast amounts of data from a number of different sources and provide the tools needed to integrate and analyze information from them. Efficient collaboration between various agencies generates better evidence and promotes more efficient, productive investigations.

To minimize risks, increase compliance, ensure consistent operations and enhance security, it is paramount that leaders from the private sector and cities collaborate to achieve common public safety goals. Many cities across the world face budget restrictions, but can gain access to new resources by partnering with the local business community. These complex and beneficial relationships are not a quick fix to a city’s challenges. In fact, such initiatives take a significant amount of time and effort to bring all the necessary stakeholders to the table. The first step is starting the conversation.     

About the Author:

Kevin Wine is Vice President, Marketing, Video & Situation Intelligence Solutions at Verint Systems Inc.

Note:

Join  Jan Petrenko, Principal & Chairman of Energy and Transportation Groups, National Standard Finance, LLC.,  as he moderates a session entitled, “Today’s Secure, Urban City: It Takes a Village” at the Secured Cities conference sponsored by Security Technology Executive and SecurityInfoWatch.com in Houston on November 10-12. This panel discussion is slated for Thursday, November 12 from 9:00 to 9:50 am. For more details on the conference program, go to http://securedcities.com/thursday.php.