The Tucson Police Department hosted its inaugural Data Sharing Event last weekend in support of the Department’s commitment to the White House Police Data Initiative. The event provided a collaborative, innovative, and fun approach to gathering and analyzing data from bicycle and pedestrian collisions, and it generated a robust discussion about distracted behavior. Members from the Tucson Department of Transportation, various Bicycle and Pedestrian Programs, the University of Arizona, civic and social organizations, and other volunteers all participated.
Participants gathered in groups and analyzed redacted reports on the collisions that were in paper format. Esri’s geoform application was to used capture the paper information and map it quickly. Attributes identified by reviewing the reports, injuries, and citations were all collected.
In real time, the data was displayed in Operations Dashboard which was projected overhead for all participants to see. Charts interactively changed to show the attributes that were collected.
Peter Johnson, the GIS Supervisor at the City of Tucson was excellent in supporting the Police Department to the event and sees the event having longer term improvement stating “The GIS Unit at the City of Tucson’s Information Technology Department is a partner with the Tucson Police Department in helping them turn their wealth of data into a wealth of information. We do this through improved data visualizations, analysis, access and automation. All of which will lead to improved planning, operational awareness, policing strategies and coordination of enforcement activities for the Police Department.”
The Tucson Police Department had a goal of making processes better. With key stakeholders in the room, they quickly assembled a survey using Survey123 to poll all participants about what data is most important to them and what data could be collected better in the future.
Data that was collected was immediately shared to Tucson’s Open Data site utilizing ArcGIS Open Data, making it available for all and supporting the White House Police Data initiative. Students from the University of Arizona have some great plans in taking this data and doing further analysis on it to help make a more livable community.
Sergeant Matthew Faulk who helped organize the event sees “…. from our perspective one of the most important elements is the Police Department to having a 360 dialogue with the community. This allows us to be much more proactive with a discussion together with people rather than being reactive with stagnate data.”
insider