Abstract

Philadelphia Public Safety GIS, A Long Journey to Success
Track: Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice
Authors: U. S. Grant Ervin

The Deputy Mayor's Office of Public Safety in conjunction with the City of Philadelphia, Police, Fire and Emergency Management Departments has recently finished implementing a state of the art ArcGIS Enterprise Environment. The environment is responsible for providing geospatial functionality to city public safety agencies, Real Time Crime Center, and Delaware Valley Intelligence Center.

The enterprise provides a single, cross department, location for GIS staff to edit, maintain, consume, publish, and create geospatial data/technology for the end users, avoiding stove-piped systems that are common in larger cities. Standardizing data across the environment has led to a better common operating picture while permitting for more detailed and accurate geospatial analysis for the Police and Fire Departments. Applications built within the environment can easily be repurposed for use by other departments/entities, reducing costs while increasing deployment speed to the users. Migrating to an interactive ArcGIS Server mapping site has been extremely beneficial.