Canada’s Edmonton Police Services (EPS) is deploying business analytics technology to prevent crime and increase public safety. Crime data analytics is a powerful tool that enables law enforcement officials to sift through historic incident, offense, arrest and call-for-service records to accurately pinpoint crime rates and patterns. The quick access to relevant information allows commanders and frontline officers to be better equipped and intelligence-led when problem solving and dealing with day-to-day responsibilities.

The initiative that began as an effort to provide accountability of public dollars has now amassed enough data to identify crime trends and locations. The agency’s investment recently helped them deal effectively with a potential increase in arson activity. By quickly comparing new information with data from previous years, the police service was able to ascertain that the trend was likely to increase from March to July. Police efforts were ultimately successful in nearly eliminating arsons in that particular area during this period.

In the future, the force hopes to take advantage of mobile devices to directly disseminate relevant information to officers, regardless of location. The end goal is the ability to place resources in advance, to put police into certain areas of the city because they predict crime will take place in that area and be able to mitigate that crime with the police presence, said John Warden, BI project team lead for EPS.

Today, the EPS is better trained, better educated and more diverse than at any other time in history. Our technological capabilities allow officers and support staff to be better equipped and intelligence-led when problem solving and dealing with day-to-day responsibilities.

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