As part of the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, the Regional Municipality of Halton is experiencing Canada’s fastest population growth. It has been named Canada’s Safest Regional Municipality to Live In for six consecutive years. The agency protecting this growing region is Halton Regional Police Service (HRPS).
With more than 1,000 members, HRPS ensures the safety of more than 500,000 citizens across 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles). From urban centers to farm lands, the agency supports diverse law enforcement efforts and policing scenarios.
“Intergraph’s Business Intelligence is critical to how we collect, analyze, and turn our data into actionable intelligence. The system is a critical ingredient to implementing our police analytics vision.”
HRPS is a forward-thinking police agency. While the region has low crime rates, agency leaders wanted to improve operational efficiencies and make smarter public safety decisions. To achieve this, HRPS decided to leverage its collective data to identify areas of improvement.
However, mining and transforming that data into actionable intelligence presented several challenges for the agency. First, critical public safety and law enforcement data was siloed throughout the organization. Second, consolidating all of the agency’s data assets into one data warehouse would consume too much time, money, and manpower. Last, the data the agency collects is vast, making it too difficult to mine, analyze, and report in an accurate and timely manner.
As a result, HRPS needed a business intelligence solution that would connect, mine, and transform data from across the organization, making it easier to analyze and accurately report. The solution also had to support the agency’s newly formed Police Analytics Unit.
Transforming Siloed Data into Business Intelligence
Using big data is a growing trend among police agencies worldwide. But mining and transforming big data into business intelligence is nearly impossible without the right tools and processes.
HRPS selected Intergraph® to help the agency leverage its public safety data with a business intelligence system – one that would connect, mine, and transform siloed data into a single database for faster and more accurate reporting and decision-making.
Connected by Intergraph’s Business Intelligence for Public Safety, HRPS databases are integrated, regardless of location or data structure. Intergraph’s solution pulls data from the agency’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, records management system (RMS), and other sources. Then, the data sets are transferred into one SQL Server database, giving the agency the ability to quickly query and run custom reports, prototype new reports, and write custom scripts.
“Intergraph’s Business Intelligence is critical to how we collect, analyze, and turn our data into actionable intelligence,” said Joseph Glover, police analytics coordinator, Halton Regional Police Service. “The system is a critical ingredient to implementing our police analytics vision.”
Supporting Police Analytics Unit Mission
Having a business intelligence system that quickly mines and transforms data into accurate reports is powerful. With experts and analysts to interpret and validate findings, an organization can realize even more actionable intelligence from its data.
“We were interested in creating a new police unit of analysts – a mixture of corporate analysis, software development, and data consultancy,” said Glover. “These analysts have backgrounds in engineering, computers sciences, and mathematics; they’re not your traditional law enforcement analyst.”
Along with transforming Halton Regional Police Service’s vast amounts of data, Intergraph’s Business Intelligence supports the agency’s Police Analytics Unit. The system ensures analysts collect, analyze, and report relevant public safety data. It also provides analysts with the flexibility to develop custom script languages and web tools that support the changing public safety data needs of the agency.
Improving Operational Efficiencies
With Intergraph’s Business Intelligence for Public Safety and the Police Analytics Unit working together, HRPS is now able transform its vast amount data into actionable intelligence to improve operationalefficiencies.
Based on its CAD and RMS databases, the agency has been able to make smarter decisions on managing cross-dispatch scenarios, allocating officers during peak call-for-service, reducing officer speeding incidents, mapping criminal activity hotspots, and more.
The HRPS has also partnered with Intergraph to integrate its record management system with its financial and human resources systems. The agency’s objective is to manage officer work performance and accurately forecast budgetary needs.
“We’ve always had ideas about ways to improve operational efficiency and public safety quality, but we never had a way to quantify and prove out those ideas,” said Glover. “Now we have a Business Intelligence system, analysts, and processes to measure data points that affect operating efficiencies. We can see if policy changes are working by looking at data.”
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