Big data is one of the most exciting and potentially useful technological advancements in the modern era of public safety. And it’s intriguing for a couple of reasons.

First off, the idea of big data is a simple one, even though it’s actually revolutionary: Big data simply means that an entity receives extremely large data sets that can be analyzed to reveal trends, associations and patterns, especially in the areas of human interactions and behavior.

This allows public safety agencies to collect more information than ever before - it may even make them able to stop crime or other emergencies before they happen. And it’s incredible to think that the technology to collect big data wasn’t really available, at least economically, until the last decade or so.

Here are some of the ways that big data use can help those in the law enforcement and public safety fields.

Social media monitoring

There have been many changes in the way we communicate in society, but the intelligence community has always used some form of communication analysis to determine who’s who in a network of criminals.

Back before the technology existed to do so more easily, intelligence operations often required many people recording the communication and movements of suspicious or criminal individuals.

Now, the digital age allows for much easier tracking of information that can be collected into big data sets. From Facebook posts to emails and beyond, a criminal network can be recorded through digital analysis tools, which is a seismic shift from the way things used to be.

Drawing connections between cases

There was once a time when different cases that seemed to have no relation to one another could only be connected through the deduction skills of investigators working long hours.

But now, software that includes speech analytics programs and specialized case management and analysis technology can bring entire disparate departments (and the notes they’ve taken) together. That allows those studying the data to make connections between different crimes and the individuals who may have committed them.

With access to this wealth of information under the big data umbrella, public safety and law enforcement agencies can test hypotheses, and verify their information more quickly than ever.

Creating crime prediction models

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the big data system is the way it allows public safety and law enforcement agencies to combine different sources of data to create a single model - like one that might help them predict potential criminal behavior.

With the massive amounts of data these agencies now have access to, public safety workers might now be able to predict a spike in crime and the areas in which it could occur. An agency acting proactively could then divert their resources towards making sure that that spike doesn’t happen.

Cybersecurity

There’s been such a surge in new technology over the past decade, technology that can be used for both good and criminal purposes, that there’s no real precedent for it in history. As the world has overwhelmingly gone paperless, it’s created a treasure trove of digitized information that those with nefarious purposes can access far more easily than ever before. Digital information might be convenient, but it’s also less secure.

Big data helps public safety and law enforcement agencies keep track of all the information out in cyberspace and how it’s being used. Sensitive information can’t fall into the wrong hands, and this new public safety technology gives law enforcement agencies the ability to keep up with hackers and other criminals.

In addition, using big data analytics programs to regularly scan for malware, ransomware, holes in code, and other cybersecurity threats can greatly improve the chances that attacks by hackers will be either prevented or caught early on.

Big data can accomplish a lot of goals for public safety agencies that were a lot more difficult to achieve even a few years ago. For more on big data, read our post “How to Gain Actionable Intelligence from Big Data.”