Public Safety in Focus
- April 24, 2017
- Public Safety
Ensuring public safety for residents is one of the critical responsibilities of municipal governments. Cities have begun leveraging the capabilities of data and analytics to improve policing, fire safety, emergency response, and many other services. The featured content below includes public safety news, a collection of resources, case studies, and more.
By Data-Smart City Solutions • April 24, 2017
#DataSmart News: Public Safety
April 24, 2017 Public Safety Our #DataSmart News series curates relevant news from our #ThisWeekInData posts for updates on different policy areas and civic data topics. March 29, 2017: How Stockton Is Using Predictive Policing to Thwart Violent Gun...
#DataSmart Resources: Public Safety
August 2, 2016 Public Safety Our #DataSmart Resources series curates links and examples for those looking for an introduction to a particular civic data topic. If you are a city official looking to improve public safety through better use of data and...
Can Algorithms Predict House Fires?
March 6, 2017 Public Safety Last December’s blaze at an Oakland, CA, warehouse was the deadliest structural fire in the U.S. in more than a decade. Thirty-six people died during an electronic dance party at the warehouse, which had housed an artists’...
Embracing Technology and Changing the Culture at the NYPD
November 28, 2016 Civic Engagement In 2015, crime in New York City fell once again, reaching its lowest level in recent decades. New Yorkers are now safer in the city than they have been in years, and yet tensions between police officers and the...
Fairness is Fiscally Responsible
June 27, 2016 Public Safety This post is an expanded version of a column that originally appeared on Governing.com. Few opportunities produce such dramatic better faster cheaper savings for cities and their counties than those that surround pretrial...
Open Data as an Accountability Tool: Chicago’s Problem Landlord List
February 23, 2015 Public Safety Municipal releases of new data sets are often marked with optimism and excitement. By making previously hard-to-access information available, they herald new opportunities for public transparency and innovation. Yet as city...
Boston Equips Firefighters with Hazard Data
July 28, 2016 Public Safety When firefighters respond to an emergency call about a building, they have a very short window of time to assess the situation and plan a response. Although governments collect a wide variety of information about each building...
Predictive Tools for Public Safety
August 18, 2014 Predictive Analytics This is the fifth in an article series based on Stephen Goldsmith's paper "Digital Transformations: Wiring the Responsive City." Click here to read the report in full. For decades, criminal-justice officials, advised...
San José Improves Traffic Safety With Data
March 16, 2016 Transportation In 2015, the City of San José, CA joined a growing list of US cities implementing a Vision Zero initiative, which aims to reduce traffic fatalities to zero through education, enforcement and engineering. During the same year...
Harnessing Data to Fight Crime in Maryland
February 23, 2015 Crime Prevention This post originally appeared on Stephen Goldsmith's Better Faster Cheaper blog on Governing.com. Last year, police in Prince George's County, Md., found themselves faced with an alarming increase in armed robberies of...
Predicting Fire Risk: From New Orleans to a Nationwide Tool
When a fire broke out in a New Orleans home in October 2015, safety procedures worked exactly as they should – smoke alarms sounded, the occupants were alerted to the danger, and all 11 residents safely escaped from the house. Earlier that year, a new...
