Crime, and the public's desire for safer cities and public spaces, sees authorities across Latin America looking for smart and connected ways to ensure civic safety, and allow the police and emergency services to react faster to emerging situations, acting before public disorder becomes a threat.
From smart cameras to use of big data, these systems are already in use around the world and seeing fast adoption across Latin America, all of which require considered planning and installation to deliver the maximum benefit without delivering an overbearing security apparatus.
Approaching Public Order Issues With Smart Thinking and Technology
From social and political unrest, to typical street crime and the threat of personal or property theft, these are all an unfortunate part of life in many Latin American countries.
Authorities can follow the examples set by other parts of the world where technology already plays a key role in assisting in crime detection and maintaining public order.
Take Japan for example, one of the safest countries in the world. Their approach involves the traditional and modern, with small police stations or "Kobans", always staffed with regular local patrols maintaining confidence and gaining intelligence in the local area. That approach was mimicked by Sao Paulo police in Brazil to help reduce crime and gain public trust.
Japan's more modern approach uses AI to predict and detect crime. The Crime Nabi system is also being used in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, helping predict where crimes will take place and plotting patrol routes to ensure police are in the vicinity at the most likely times to either discourage criminals or swoop to catch them in the act.
The Brazilian experiment saw crime, notably valuable theft of metals, reduced by 69% which attracted great interest from other Latin American nations.
Using Smart Cameras for Tactical Security
While the likes of Crime Nabi and other systems help in the long-term battle against crime and disorder, to maintain constant vision on the streets, stores and public areas, cameras are also learning from AI to make them smarter and more useful for security teams and police.
A wide range of commercial security cameras are available to cover areas large and small. Security cameras are hardly new, but the visual fidelity, audio capture and AI features of the controlling software make them hugely useful.
Instead of human operators watching a bank of monitors, panning-and-scanning for activity, AI-powered security systems watch every screen constantly, looking and listening for criminal or unruly behavior. In shops and malls, they can identify suspicious behavior such as shoplifting (people putting goods in bags or inside their jacket) and tracking the suspect while sending guards their details and location.
Outside and in public, the motion, gestures or tone or groups of youths becoming more boisterous, can be monitored, enabling security to break up groups before they become a problem,
The systems can also identify the audio cues of trouble, such as breaking glass, rowdy behavior, gunshots and threats. While smart systems can link troublemakers to their cars and pass license plate details on to the police to track suspects down.
And as AI gets smarter, the same hardware can learn new tricks to predict where trouble will happen, without the cost of all-new cameras. Behavior and crowd density analysis can point to trouble at concerts and sporting events before it takes place, while systems can be linked across smart cities, to gain a broader picture of trouble spots and troublemakers, helping predict and prevent continued problems.
On a larger scale, tower-, blimp-, and drone-mounted cameras can watch over large areas to monitor for people or drug trafficking, environmental pollution and other issues. While at the personal level, small stores can use a single camera, and security staff, as well as the public, can use personal mounted cameras to provide reassurance and evidence at close quarters.
Smart Analytics Helps Fight Crime
With all the data from metropolitan, police and other security sources, there is a wealth of information that AI can analyze in real-time to help predict and detect crime, as Argentina plans to do. That data and smart city sensors build up a living picture of crime.
This enables detectives to work at a high level to solve crime, and for society and urban planners to develop new solutions that can counter crime before it has a chance to take route in new estates or redeveloped areas.
And at a government level, this technology must be balanced against the freedom of innocent people, creating tensions and requiring a clear explanation of the facts and effects of any use of technology to police society better. Anonymized data, metadata and other methods can all help protect personal privacy while helping these systems work.
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