Constant vigilance and insightful analysis are a government’s best defences against crime. Easier said than done. With limited human and digital resources, many cities are beginning to solve crimes, and avoid the conditions that enable them, by tapping into the eyes, ears and phones of their best and most abundant asset: citizens.

1. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2016
Becoming resilient to crime in surging cities
Constant vigilance and insightful analysis are a government’s best defences against crime. Easier
said than done. With limited human and digital resources, many cities are beginning to solve
crimes, and avoid the conditions that enable them, by tapping into the eyes, ears and phones of
their best and most abundant asset: citizens.
Today’s technology provides citizens with a wealth of tools to report problems with safety
conditions in real time to help police and other public-safety officials become more informed.
Delhi, India, for example, is a bustling metropolis with a rapidly growing population—it also recently
reported a stunning 99% year-over-year increase in crime. The city government is now actively
collecting crowdsourced security data from a number of map-based apps that citizens use to flag
problem locations, including issues of lighting, security, unsafe road and sidewalk conditions,
availability of public transport and perceptions of safety.
While some early successes from the crowdsourced data include expanded lighting and added
CCTV cameras in a few troubled neighbourhoods, the city hasn’t cracked the code. Kalpana
Viswanat, founder of one New Delhi safety-reporting app, SafetiPin, is quick to point out that the
data collected by its app are too incomplete by themselves to drive more significant government
decision-making.
The UN Habitat and its Safer Cities Programme have partnered with SafetiPin to launch its
approach in other growing and resource-strained cities such as Bogota and Nairobi. But the UN,
too, is aware of current data’s limitations. UN Habitat has started to collate the app’s local data
with city victim surveys, other crime observations and national statistics. This effort highlights that no
one stream of data will prove to be the tipping point in creating meaningful change.
Putting the pieces together
To most effectively put information to work, governments must create and be able to act on a
holistic operating picture. Thus, they must have information about current conditions and city
resources and be able to analyse all that information in the context of municipal transactional
systems like case management and crime information, emergency and non-emergency service logs
and so much more.
Too often, however, agencies keep their data in silos, including data from citizens, smart-
infrastructure sensors, public records and police and fire department records. This results in patchy
Resilient cities: extending public services
with digitally empowered citizens
A case study from
The Economist
Intelligence Unit
Case study
To most
effectively put
information to
work,
governments
must create
and be able to
act on a holistic
operating
picture.

2. © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2016
Case study
and incomplete outputs. Unlocking and combining that data within a mutually accessible,
enterprise-wide knowledge management system—one that can offer new insights into the
conditions under which crime most often occurs—can help everyone put resources where they’ll
engender the most public benefit.
CENTRIC, an applied research centre at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, is working to address
silos. The centre has been extensively researching situations of crime and crisis, including terrorist
incidents, mass shootings and natural disasters. Working with a number of government agencies,
private enterprises and law enforcement entities, its director, Babak Akhgar, has explored how to
more successfully harness crowdsourced data, process them to create “situational awareness” for
the agencies and then effectively deploy resources. This can include first responders—fire, police,
emergency medical workers—using cameras to send images to a command and control centre
and combining this information with social media feeds and CCTV camera feeds to ensure that
leaders have a real-time understanding of the situation and of needed resources and know the
location of those resources.
Mr Akhgar describes the case of a gas explosion in New York City, when command-and-control
was able to use data and sophisticated analytics to prepare local hospitals, direct traffic and alert
the civil aviation authority of possible risks. “All of these capabilities started with collecting the
information,” he says.
The challenge for cities is to manage the volume, velocity and variety of inputs. “You are dealing
with a ginormous volume of data,” Mr Akhgar says. “You are dealing with many different formats
and the speed it’s coming in is so fast.”
And, while these days citizens frequently make use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram,
Mr Akhgar reminds us that the go-to social media will surely change: “Today Twitter or Facebook
are fashionable. Tomorrow it may be something else. We are less concerned with the specific
platform. We are just concerned with how to pull out the best of the data.” The mountain of
fragmented, unstructured data useful to agencies will continue to grow. The challenge is to build
more, and increasingly effective, platforms that focus on achieving broader government goals.
Looking ahead
Citizens around the world are getting impatient. A citizen who reports unsafe conditions through
social media, official channels or a mobile app should expect an intelligent and timely response
from the appropriate city agency. That so many cities still falter is particularly concerning when
incidents are life-threatening. What is also true, however, is that these cases can be especially
complex, involving many agencies that need to collaborate and move quickly.
Juma Assiago, coordinator of the UN Habitat Safer Cities Programme, says one obstacle local
communities continually face is a lack of confidence that the information citizens provide will be
acted upon or that city leaders will be held accountable. Mr Assiago insists that “it is not only a
question of political will, but also of being technologically empowered.” That can change, he
asserts: “The capability is here,” but investments must be made. “It’s now up to the government
agencies and the civil authorities.” Cities must now all face the question of how resilient against
crime they are willing to be.
“Today Twitter
or Facebook
are fashionable.
Tomorrow it
may be
something else.
We are less
concerned with
the specific
platform. We
are just
concerned with
how to pull out
the best of the
data.”
Babak Akhgar,
direct of CENTRIC, an
applied research centre
at Sheffield Hallam
University in the UK