Photo by Stephen Hosmer
Public safety organizations rely on network technologies to rapidly and effectively respond to emergencies, cultivate safety, and manage public welfare. Police & fire departments, ambulance & rescue services, emergency communication networks, and volunteer communities all depend on access to broadband services in order to organize the complex collaborations & communication channels necessary to maintain public safety, both locally and across regional & national agencies. Increasingly, the efforts of these organizations are turning to the community to get information about local crime, gang activity, fire incidents, and other first-responder events, while local residents expect more public disclosure and interaction from these organizations in return. This shift towards a more open & engaged relationship between public safety organizations and local residents has been enabled by broadband access to the social web.
Modern responders take advantage of online services like Oakland Crimespotting that aggregate police data and publish it to the web, empowering the community to have more visibility into local challenges. The last two Summer’s saw major fires ravaging the hills of Santa Cruz county. Local residents set up blogs to track critical information and relied on the ad hoc chat service hosted by KCBS.com to coordinate evacuations, locate relatives, and respond to changes in wind & fire conditions. Twice in recent years the single line of cable providing all of the network access to Santa Cruz – web, phone, credit card transactions – has been severed, rendering the entire city offline (much of the city economy was brought to a halt – a reminder of just how important network access has become).
Expanding broadband in Santa Cruz would enable a groundswell of local service development to help assist in the many needs of managing public safety, and would inspire tremendous innovation in new services and integrations to help all stakeholders participate in building a stronger, safer, and more resilient community.
Here’s some other potential projects:
- run real time calls-for-service data with geo coding features
- provide interactive tip features (text a tip/IM tips etc)
- hold virtual town halls (ask your police chief/meet your beat lieutenant)
- maintain real time blogs or story features
- stream videos and provide photos of surveillance footage etc of wanted people – provide more pictorial depictions of suspects
Chris Arkenberg is a technologist, forecaster, and strategist. He currently sits on the advisory board for 
