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IBM Business Analytics helps police service of Northern Ireland achieve lowest crime rates in a decade
IBM announced today that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) is using its 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.
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. It 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 allocate resources accordingly.
The 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.
"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, 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.
