Mobile devices are fundamentally transforming public safety operations, providing new opportunities for citizens and governments to send and receive real-time information. In order to demonstrate the power of mobility, New Zealand Police and Vodafone recently established the Mobility Innovation Lab and Experience Centre. Featuring Intergraph, the centre aims to foster collaborative innovation and deployment of mobile tools and technology to support day-to-day operational policing.
In addition to Intergraph, the Wellington-based centre brings together global and local partners such as Nokia, BroadSoft, Airpoint and Smudge. Other organisations will be invited to participate and leverage the new developments and solutions of mobile technology offered in the centre. The centre features a fully contained 2/3/4G network and a state-of-the-art video conferencing capability in a live environment.
The centre is part of New Zealand Police’s mobility programme, which saw the agency equip frontline police with 15,000 handheld, smart devices, making it one of the largest deployments of its kind in the world. Part of the second phase of the agency’s Policing Excellence programme, it has been recognised as one of the most extensive and successful mobility developments for any police agency globally.
A partner of the law enforcement agency since 1996, Intergraph deployed its Mobile Responder app on these smart devices, helping to re-invent how the police work; raising both public safety and police productivity. The officers are now free to focus on their core duty – protecting the community, rather than spending time at their desks.
With Mobile Responder, officers can access real-time vital data and incident communication from Intergraph’s computer-aided dispatch system, I/CAD, via their smart devices over Vodafone’s high-speed network while on the go. With the mobile solution, officers can now make smarter decisions faster in critical situations. In all, New Zealand Police enjoy huge productivity gains from the mobility programme, effectively saving around 30 minutes per officer per shift, adding to a massive 520,000 hours each year, and most significantly, putting 345 more police officers on the streets.
Intergraph is harnessing the power of smart devices for public safety solutions, proving that mobile connectivity makes policing easier and crime fighting smarter and helps build safer communities and a more secure world.
