IBM Business Analytics helps Police Service of Northern Ireland achieve Lowest Crime Rates in a Decade
LONDON, UK – 15 Sep 2011: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is using IBM Business Analytics software to help officers more quickly identify and respond to crime trends, reduce incidents and improve data sharing across its 29 policing areas and 80 stations. This improved insight has helped PSNI to identify and manage crime spots and assisted them with reducing overall recorded crime rates in Northern Ireland which are now at their lowest level in more than a decade (1).
The project in Northern Ireland is part of a growing trend among local governments in Europe and beyond to establish Smarter Cities where safety and services for citizens are improved through new technologies while preserving government budget resources.
The PSNI project is using advanced analytics software from IBM to mine, share and extract intelligence from critical police data across its eight districts in order to improve police investigative and prevention programs. By identifying incident patterns the organisation can forecast crime “hot spots” and proactively allocate resources accordingly. The new capabilities are vital in a territory where seasonality can make a significant difference to police workload; for example, around the various annual parades.
The IBM solution, developed and implemented by Bidetime, an IBM Premier Business Partner, centralises information from Northern Ireland’s police districts. It allows its 7,000 police officers and approximately 2,500 police staff to expand proactive, community-driven approaches to police work by enabling staff to drill down to district and area level to quickly identify and respond to issues.
“With real-time information, our professionals in various areas are alerted at the same time of crime incidents and can decide how best to distribute resources far more quickly,” said Inspector Amanda Brisbane, Corporate Performance Manager for PSNI. “Working with IBM technology we are able to better manage performance and risks throughout the organisation, and gain greater transparency across operations to improve public safety for citizens.”
“One of the most effective ways to reduce crime in cities and in this case, the entire region of Northern Ireland, is by applying analytics technology to public safety. By identifying crime patterns, law enforcement is able to gain valuable insight and focus resources on proactive policing efforts to improve citizen services,” said Mark Cleverley, Director, IBM Global Public Safety. “IBM technology is helping the Police Service of Northern Ireland to extract meaning from data to quickly address current public safety concerns and predict future incidents.”
Bidetime’s tailored deployment of the IBM software simplifies the management of risk registers and automatically notifies risk-owners when action needs to be taken. PSNI can follow crime statistics and measure its performance against a range of targets such as quality of service; ‘protective’ targets such as serious crime, road safety and drugs; and ‘personal’ targets, such as anti-social behaviour, burglaries and similar issues.
The PSNI project demonstrates the enormous promise of new technologies to help public officials better manage their vast array of data, leading to the creation of Smarter Cities. IBM has more than 2,000 Smarter Cities engagements underway around the world, helping municipalities manage public services such as emergency response, crime, traffic and water systems more efficiently.
These projects rely heavily on advanced analytics technologies that enable organisations to gain important insights from Big Data, information culled from the myriad digital sources throughout the world.
IBM has invested more than $14 billion in acquisitions to build an analytics portfolio which includes more than 24 acquisitions. In addition, IBM has assembled nearly 8,000 analytics consultants including almost 300 researchers, and established a network of eight analytics centers of excellence around the world to help clients use analytics within their organizations.
The IBM Business Analytics solution at PSNI, based on IBM Cognos Business Intelligence software, is called PRiDE – Performance and Risk in Delivering Excellence. The system was built and deployed by IBM Premier Business Partner, Bidetime Ltd.
For more information on Bidetime Ltd, visit: http://www.bidetime.co.uk/
For more information about PSNI, visit: http://www.psni.police.uk/
(1) See the PSNI’s statistical report, published in May 2011: http://www.psni.police.uk/psni_10_11_stats_press_release_final.pdf
For more information about IBM , visit: http://www.ibm.com/software/uk/data/cognos/