New Orleans Wins Public Safety and Emergency Management Award
The award recognizes technology and innovation at the New Orleans Real-Time Crime Center.
The city of New Orleans recently accepted an IDC Smart Cities award for innovation in public safety and emergency management at the 2019 Smart Cities New York conference. The award recognizes technology and innovation at the New Orleans Real-Time Crime Center. New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Director Collin Arnold and RTCC IT Manager George Barlow Brown accepted the award on behalf of Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the city.
After reviewing some 16,000 unique public votes and scoring by an international panel of judges, IDC Government Insights announced the winners in 12 categories of the second annual IDC Smart Cities North America Awards. The awards were designed to recognize progress by North American communities in executing mart Cities projects and to provide a forum for sharing best practices to help accelerate Smart City development. New Orleans is one of 14 awardees in 12 different categories and is the only city recognized in the category of public safety.
"I am tremendously proud of the New Orleans Real-Time Crime Center and of our NOHSEP leadership team," Cantrell said. "This award from IDC Smart Cities is a recognition of the hard work they are doing to keep our city safe. Our RTCC is serving as a model for communities around the world, promoting public safety in public spaces."
Other awards included San Diego for Administration; Chicago for Civic Engagement; Las Vegas for Economic Development, Tourism, Arts, Libraries Culture, Open Spaces Economic, Mobility and Safety; Chattanooga, Tenn., for Education; Houston for Smart Buildings; Albany, N.Y., for Smart Water; and San Jose, Calif., for Transportation.
With a network of 400 city-owned public safety cameras and 150 privately integrated cameras, the New Orleans 24/7 RTCC leverages technology to provide critical information to first responders in the field and to assist with investigations of criminal activity or quality of life concerns. RTCC staffers fielded more than 3,200 requests for assistance from public safety agencies in 2018 and were able to provide relevant footage for 70 percent of those requests.
"The technology in the Crime Center truly helps our officers arrive to a scene safely and make better decisions once they're there," said NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson, "and footage is also helping us build stronger cases."
"What we're doing in the crime center is leveraging technology to save officers time," added Collin Arnold, NOHSEP director. "That can act as a short-term, artificial force multiplier while we tackle the long-term challenges of recruitment and retention."