At SAS' Analytics Insights 2017 on Thursday, Mark Rollo and Dallas Reilly of Victoria Police described the work being done to modernise information management within the organisation.
Central to all Victoria Police information is case management, but this historically has data spread across a rich variety of sources – geospatial, digital data, visual analytics, in-car video, body-worn cameras, number-plate recognition, mobile technologies, Police Assistance Line and Online Reporting, among others.
"Information is the lifeblood of policing," the speakers said. "Quality and actionable intelligence is critical."
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With BlueConnect in place, the Victoria Police now has information more readily available. Police on the ground can respond to incidents, arriving at a location far more prepared with information while police performing intelligence work can more swiftly analyse trends and seek to predict events of concern.
BlueConnect is not the end result, but merely the first big milestone on the journey to what Dallas Reilly termed "the connected cop".
The future of Victorian policing – the Connected Cop! Made possible with SAS #analyticsinsights pic.twitter.com/wrmsiNSYeF
— davidmwilliams (@davidmwilliams) August 3, 2017
Reilly portrayed a vision of the future of policing where a patrol learns of an event. The police officers respond, their phone plotting a course to the location. An officer turns on the car siren which, in turn, activates recording on the in-car camera and officer body-worn cameras for evidence.
Enroute, the officers are informed about the situation, the location, the occupants, prior offences, potential weapon threats, and more data. The officers attend to the situation, and if a taser must be deployed this too captures video for evidence.
The officers defuse the situation, speak to victims and witnesses while continuing to capture video on their body cameras. The officers return to base, their equipment uploading and synchronising video files, vehicle and other machine data, and all the other items gathered. They can process the offender swiftly, and return to the street, with a previous vast manual workload of paperwork being handled automatically.
More formally, Victoria Police refer to this as integration; the integrated officer, the integrated patrol, and the integrated vehicle.
The SAS' Analytics Insights keynote was delivered by R "Ray" Wang from Constellation Research on the need for AI-driven smart-services, followed by SAS' Kimberly Nevala on how to identify good AI project opportunities – including the very true statement, "A $2 billion idea which does not get implemented is a $0 idea."
The Black Dog Institute also spoke about the work they are performing with the assistance of SAS in using data analytics to transform mental health services and reduce suicide. SAS supports the institute in its "Data for good" programme.
