New York Police cameras
Times are getting tougher for criminals, thanks to technological advancements in public safety. Public spaces today are protected by high-tech surveillance systems, ranging from security cameras to gunshot detectors that form a digitized infrastructure that makes it easier to catch criminals. And now, recent advancements in data analytics may soon make it possible to deter crimes before they happen.
Today’s modern cities collect data to inform or alert public officials about a vast array of community events, including crimes, traffic gridlock, weather conditions, public transit statuses, and social media chatter. Just how much data are cities dealing with? In 2012 alone, an estimated 200 million security cameras around the world captured 1.6 trillion hours of video footage, a figure expected to double by 2020. Monitoring that volume of video would take hundreds of millions of humans working full time.