Pandemic accelerates demand for and adoption of technology for public safety

Motorola Solutions, in partnership with a leading academic and independent research team directed by Dr Chris Brauer at Goldsmiths University of London, has conducted a global study that uncovers how expectations for safety and security are changing while fuelling public safety and enterprise innovation.

The ‘Consensus for Change’ report surveyed 12,000 citizens and interviewed 50 public safety agencies, commercial organisations and industry experts across 10 geographic markets: Australia, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Nordics, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States. It analyses how the global COVID-19 pandemic heightened awareness of the need for technology to enhance public safety while accelerating innovation and technology adoption for emergency services and enterprises around the world.

The study finds that an overwhelming 88% of citizens globally want to see public safety transformed through the use of advanced technology. Other major findings include: 71% say technologies, such as video cameras, data analytics, cybersecurity and the cloud, are needed to address challenges of the modern world.

Other findings include: 70% say emergency services should be able to predict risk, a task that can be supported by advanced technologies; 75% say that they are willing to trust the organisations that hold their information so long as they use it appropriately.

Consensus for Change highlights how the pandemic sparked high-velocity innovation for public safety agencies and businesses, especially in the areas of cloud adoption, video security and interoperability between disparate organisations and systems, while reconfirming the need for reliable and resilient mission-critical communications.

The report is a resource for public safety agencies and enterprises to understand and apply lessons from the pandemic. The pandemic has highlighted the need to look at things and respond differently: from assessing risks and better predicting areas of operational disruption, to evaluating and integrating the right technologies to support business continuity.

It has also reinforced the need for better communication and collaboration with communities and among stakeholders to secure support for the expanded use of advanced technologies.

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