AI and the cloud's evolving role in public safety

In our modern, digital world, it seems that AI is everywhere.

In the public safety arena, the potential for AI to help reduce crime and improve response to emergencies is massive. According to an article in Artificial Intelligence +, experts say smart technologies like AI could help reduce crime in cities by up to 40%, while improving emergency services’ response times by 20–35%.

Still, concerns about privacy and other issues with AI are real, so the police commissioners of Australia and New Zealand issued a set of principles in 2023 to guide the ethical and responsible use of AI in public safety.

Those principles include transparency, fairness, explainability, accountability, reliability, human oversight, and privacy and security. One of the most important of those principles is human oversight. In public safety, it’s important that AI be used in an assistive role, helping agencies sift through mountains of data to uncover insights, but leaving the decisions on how to react to those insights to the humans in charge.

Connecting in the cloud

Australian authorities have a long history of working together when disaster strikes. The 2009 and 2020 bushfires in Victoria, 2011 flooding in Southeast Queensland and 2022 flooding in New South Wales are excellent examples. In each case, and many others, emergency services agencies from across the country came to help.

Imagine how much more efficient that collaboration could be with today’s technology, augmented by the insights generated by assistive AI.

Put all the agencies together in a cloud-based collaboration portal and the benefits of collaboration are multiplied. During a major incident or event, multiple agencies — not just public safety agencies, but hospitals, highway departments or public works, as needed — can be added to such a portal, giving them all a common operating picture, and the bonus of real-time alerts generated by the embedded AI.

Encouraging public safety agencies to work together has become a priority in Australia and New Zealand’s public safety sector, so much so that collaboration was a central focus of the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency’s 2023 Police Conference.

Cloud-based collaboration portals can be the technology bridge necessary to put agencies that don’t work together every day on the same page.

By sharing data and insights, agencies can break down silos and provide staff with greater access to relevant information, while assistive AI helps dig out the right data at the right time.

Real-time response

Along with disaster response, assistive AI is also effective in fighting crime and responding to public incidents. While authorities are on the way, the AI can start mining information that will prepare teams arriving at the scene and can be kept on file as evidence. This helps resolve crimes in real time, rather than waiting until much later to sift through historical data.

When it gets to the investigation phase, selecting the right tools improves collaboration among agencies. Being connected to multiple public safety agencies via the cloud means this information can be readily available, improving the workflow.

A crucial aspect of AI tools is that they are always looking at patterns in the data they’re monitoring, whether from CCTV footage or emergency calls. However, this doesn’t remove the need for human intelligence, as the security and emergency response teams must still make decisions based on available information. The software brings to attention patterns that aren’t easily visible to the human eye.

Dynamic integration

Collaboration among public safety agencies requires dynamic integration — the process of consolidating data from multiple datasets into one — to help all involved derive actionable insights and respond accordingly. The use of the cloud and AI technology is essential for optimal results.

AI is being adopted at a rapid pace in many sectors across Australia and New Zealand, and police, fire and ambulance services are not far behind in joining the trend.

As these technologies are adopted and scaled up, it will lead to faster, more efficient responses from public safety partners, and better protection for the public.

For more about AI and collaboration portals in public safety, visit hxgnpublicsafety.com.

*David Dennis is a Public Safety Consultant, APAC at Hexagon’s Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial Division.

Image credit: iStock.com/Julia Gomina