Smarter City Security: Mapping the Path to SuccessThrough partnerships, grant competitions and technology, cities nationwideare utilizing security to push their economies and quality of life forward.

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August 1, 2016

Claire Meyer

A few months ago, cities around the world anxiously awaited for the results of the Global Cities Index,

which identi es the world's top 125 cities on the basis of their ability to attract and retain global capital,

people and ideas, as well as sustain that performance in the long term.

The indexes are based on a range of metrics, each with different weighting. For the Global Cities Index, 27

metrics across ve dimensions are considered: Business activity (30 percent); Human capital (30 percent);

Information exchange (15 percent); Cultural experience (15 percent); and Political engagement (10

percent). For the Global Cities Outlook, 13 indicators across four dimensions were taken into

consideration: Personal well-being (25 percent); Economics (25 percent); Innovation (25 percent); and

Governance (25 percent).

Why does this matter? Some might say that a higher ranking means the ability for a city to grow and be

economically prosperous.

Security and public safety may not be of cially on the Index, but it underwrites nearly every single criteria.

If a city does not have a reputation for safety, will talented, innovative people and companies be inclined

to move there? If city governments are not openly invested in supporting businesses’ security and success,

would capital be forthcoming? Security may be behind the scenes, but it is integral to citywide success.

In this report, learn how city of cials in the U.S. are investing in public safety, next-generation policing

and smart city initiatives to improve the lives and potential of citizens, increase city security and attract

global business and investment, as well as how some cities are competing for funding through a national

Smart Cities search (see sidebar for information on this year’s winner).

Taking Responsibility, Sharing Data

Juliette Kayyem, who serves as a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, teaching

emergency management and homeland security and as a member of DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson’s

Homeland Security Advisory Committee, says: “While we can focus on private-public partnerships, the

Chief George Turner is a 35-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department. The department partners with private

enterprises to utilize outside security cameras, integrating them into a city-wide surveillance program for smarter

responsibilities do not lie equally. Part of thinking about secure cities is, while there can be a lot of shared

planning, the public will always view government as responsible. The good news is that the private sector

is very engaged in these efforts and is a willing partner, in particular not just because they have employees,

but because they are part of these communities.”

A strong example of public-private partnership success, Atlanta, Georgia, has had a tumultuous reputation

for crime rates in decades past, but with current smart policing initiatives and a surge of public-private

partnerships, crime rates are currently lower than they’ve been since the 1960s.

It’s also been attracting attention for its economic clout. The city has a gross domestic product of $270

billion, and it’s the third most popular city in the U.S. for Fortune 500 companies.

Atlanta Chief of Police George Turner, a 35-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department, says that “For

more than 25 years, Atlanta had a reputation as one of the most violent cities in America. I believe that

because of the relationship we have through the Atlanta Police Foundation, the administration that we

currently have in place, we’ve been able to foster a more cohesive relationship with business so they feel

more comfortable, and so they’re relocating their business to Atlanta… Businesses are voting with their

feet.”

Businesses are also helping the city improve by sharing their existing resources. Through Operation

SHIELD, Atlanta police and rst responders have access to more than 7,300 cameras across the city, while

the city only owns and maintains about 400 of them. Operation SHIELD is a public-private partnership,

through which businesses and enterprises in the metropolitan area share access to their exterior cameras

with the police department, effectively multiplying law enforcement’s situational awareness without

needing to multiply its budget.

“It’s clear for us that the next wave of smart policing includes data exchange, which goes from being able

to communicate verbally as well as being able to view what’s going on in all quadrants of our city,” says

Chief Turner. “The expenses associated with what this network would have cost us, I can only tell you what

I know: In New York City, for instance in Manhattan, after 9/11, New York City received about a $300

million grant to build out a network of cameras. The City of Atlanta has now invested about $5 million on

this entire network. The bene t is that we have the situational awareness that we need and in strategic

locations, at pennies of the cost of other cities that are doing this nationwide as well as internationally.”

The camera feeds are viewed and monitored in the city’s Video Integration Center (or VIC), and law

enforcement’s dispatchers can use the radio component of the program to share information back and

forth with private security of cers.

This system keeps law enforcement alert and aware, especially in large or high-pro le events that cover a

lot of ground. For the annual Peachtree Road Race – the world’s largest 10K, held every year on the Fourth

of July – the entire route is fully recorded through Operation SHIELD, which helps law enforcement with

crowd management and ow, as well as maintaining awareness of any potential threats.

“Homeland security starts with local agencies,” says Chief Turner. “No police chief in America will tell you

any different. If there’s a natural emergency or hazardous situation, we will be the rst on the scene. We

have to be prepared and trained and working with our partners so we can respond appropriately, and nd a

way to build out after we make our initial response.”

For the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut, gaining situational awareness meant consolidating security

systems onto one platform. According to Jorge Garcia, former Director of Public Facilities for the City of

Bridgeport, and now Director of New England Operations for integration rm A-Plus Technologies, the city

leveraged grants from different departments for one, uni ed PSIM project, rolling disparate sensors and

systems into one platform in order to manage the city more effectively, Garcia says.

The system makes the city’s 1,500 cameras – including schools’ security infrastructure – and some private

sector surveillance devices accessible to rst responders and city of cials in a more intuitive system with

uniform messaging during an emergency.

For a lockdown situation in a school or city building, for example, the building can be locked down from

one remote location, and the building’s doors can be unlocked from one remote location. Personnel in the

security operations center can send 3D maps and information about the building and environment to rst

responders so they’re better informed about the situation they’re entering. If there’s a re alarm in the

high school, Garcia says, an operator could log into the building’s security system and use the surveillance

cameras to verify the presence of smoke, helping to inform rst responders that it’s an active event, not a

potential false alarm.

The City of Bridgeport is not nished yet. Because it’s running with a PSIM infrastructure, there’s no

technical ceiling to how many systems or devices could be added, so private sector enterprises can join in,

and more cameras can be added when funds are available.

Bi-directional information sharing is key to so many public-private working relationships in cities across

the world. According to Alan Snow, Director of Safety and Security for the Boston region of real estate

investment trust Boston Properties: “There are multiple private-public sector partnership networking

groups where our security team has been regularly participating and in many cases actually facilitating the

networking meetings to exchange information and provide further information sharing via group emails.

Additionally, our security team conducts regular orientation and familiarization tours of our properties for

rst responding public safety of cials, including police, re and EMS, to enable ef cient and effective

response to routing incidents, as well as major emergencies such as active shooter, mass casualty and re

conditions.”

Snow and the Boston Properties security team also participate in joint tabletop exercises with public safety

agencies and other private sector companies. Snow also cites the importance of partnering outside a single

municipality or jurisdiction to include local, state and federal agencies, advocating for a “proactive

approach along the lines of an overarching Meta-Leadership framework” that focuses on enhancing

communication, crime prevention and emergency preparedness coordination, as well as mitigating

potential threats and major emergencies, by taking a holistic view. Learn more about Meta-Leadership

from the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at npli.sph.harvard.edu/meta-leadership.

He says that these holistic city security initiatives “provide the basis for an overall resiliency strategy for

the city, the residents and the private enterprises by creating robust community service liaison programs

through which direct channels of communication are established for bi-directional communication

between the private sector and public safety. Once these channels are established, information about

crime trends, quality of life issues, suspicious activity reporting and real-time emergency and safety

information can be disseminated. They provide an opportunity to enable invaluable networking, build

relationships and collaboration, while at the same time establishing familiarization and trust before an

emergency event occurs.”

Snow also references the use of technology, such as sharing video feeds or utilizing social media for easier

information sharing with citizens and private enterprises.

 

City Services and Amenities

For many cities, smart security hinges on technology, and oftentimes, private sector technology will

provide ways of making security less burdensome and more bene cial to the city and its citizens.

In the City of Lakeland, Florida, city of cials found unexpected bene ts and opportunities when they

standardized their disparate security systems into Genetec’s Security Center platform, putting video

surveillance, access control, intrusion alerts and license plate recognition systems in one program,

installed at 53 sites throughout the city, including police and re departments, city hall, the regional

airport, public works facilities and others, managing a total of 650 cameras and more than 450 doors.

According to Alan Lee, Security and Safety Systems Supervisor for the City of Lakeland’s Public Works

Facilities department, the system is constantly being reviewed and revamped to bring new technology and

new bene ts for the city. Currently, he is working to add license plate recognition (LPR) technology to

make meter management and law enforcement tasks more ef cient. Soon, patrolling of cials will be able

to access the system via mobile devices. The system also helps parking enforcers to establish citations

more quickly.

The system is also integrated into all traf c signal cameras, so city personnel can use the system to

effectively monitor and maintain the ow of traf c and helping to detour drivers around accidents. “This

also allows our local police department to tie in and view those same cameras, so for special events

downtown, it helps to point out any abnormalities. It helps keep citizens safe and secure behind the

scenes.”

“We’re also adding LPR technology onto the system for our downtown parking enforcers,” Lee says. “You

have limited parking time, to free up parking for other individuals. This technology can read license plates

faster than a person on foot can and more accurately, establishing those citation or alarms much quicker.”

In the ski resort city of Vail, Colorado, city of cials were looking for a way to improve security and

awareness for the World Alpine Ski Championships in 2014. Because the terrain is sometimes challenging

to lay ber in, the city used Siklu’s wireless radios to extend surveillance services further out.

According to Vail’s Director of Information Technology, Ron Braden, the town’s 140-camera system could

be tied into law enforcement’s security programs during events, heightening situational awareness. The

system was used to locate suspicious vehicles or track individuals during the event, but now, traf c of cers

utilize the cameras for loading and delivery monitoring, and public safety of cials can use the system to

investigate crime and potential liability, in the event of a staged slip-and-fall or similar incident.

“This helps Vail from a loss standpoint; it helps public safety for investigations, and it helps to improve

the guest experience,” says Braden. “Anytime you have a big event coming into town, you need to be able

to support them, both from a bed standpoint and an infrastructure standpoint. The special event

organizations that come into town use our infrastructure, they use the WiFi, they use the camera systems

– we do a lot of crowd monitoring, from a traf c control and crowd monitoring standpoint, and the

cameras really come in handy.”

 

Intelligence and All Hazards

Last month, a French parliamentary committee examining the two terrorist attacks in Paris presented 40

proposals, in which the lawmakers urged the government to merge some of France’s overlapping – and

sometimes competing – agencies to create a new national agency, similar to the U.S. National

Counterterrorism Center, to set up a shared anti-terrorism database, to better monitor prisons for

radicalization, and to tighten the sentencing of convicted terrorists. The committee raised questions about

the ef ciency of the state of emergency that French President Francois Hollande declared following the

attacks in November, and of the deployment of 10,000 soldiers around the country to protect cities and

other sensitive areas.

The committee cited that several of the terrorists involved in the attacks were agged as potential threats

or as radicalized militants in other European nations, but this information was not shared with the French

police. While it didn’t disavow the use of physical security technology, states of emergency or law

enforcement patrols, the report called for a greater focus on intelligence-gathering and sharing.

According to Kayyem, “Resiliency is not just a mood. It’s investment in key areas, and one of those is

investment in the capacity to pivot. In homeland security planning now, we don’t actually talk about

terrorism speci cally. We don’t talk about climate change speci cally. We don’t talk about cyber threats

speci cally. We talk about all hazards planning. And the reason why is, in this age of globalization, you

can’t know what the speci c threat may be, but what you do know is if something bad happens, our public

safety apparatus is going to have to pivot to respond.”

In the 2013 Boston Marathon, she says, there was a public health apparatus, and before the bombing, they

were concerned about blisters, exhaustion and dehydration. “It was their capacity to pivot, which was

investments in training, equipment and exercises, that turned them into essentially a war triage unit, and

the success of that is measured in this fact: Three people died in the Boston Marathon because of the

explosion. Not a single person died who made it to a hospital. That’s remarkable.”

According to Snow, “The partnerships and individual relationships had already been established prior to

the Marathon Attack, and as a result, the response and dissemination of information after the attack was

more ef cient and effective. The experience and collaboration between the private sector and public safety

after the attack resulted in an enhanced strengthening and re-af rmation of the criticality for the existing

partnerships. Participation from a few additional private enterprises and public agencies increased due to

their recognition of the bene ts and that they need to be more involved in advance and on a regular basis.”

Kayyem adds that security initiatives, while important, can’t stop a city from functioning, such as

adopting airport-level security screening for New York City subway stops. City security of cials should

assume a consistent and persistent level of risk, and focus on how to respond and mitigate the

consequences of potentially exploited vulnerabilities, she says. Because if a city’s security team is solely

focused on terrorism and then the impact of the Zika virus comes their way, gaps in security could easily

arise.

 In Atlanta, Chief Turner works with the city’s Emergency Preparedness Of cer and public safety

departments to collaboratively develop cohesive plans in response to a variety of scenarios, such as a

citywide evacuation. City leaders hold tabletop exercises with public response of cials and local, state and

federal partners, including the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia Municipal Association and the

FBI, as well as Federal partners at the Harts eld-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, local university

security of cials, and public transit authorities, such as MARTA.

After major events, the team works to develop appropriate responses and training, adjusting existing

procedures where necessary.  After the terrorist attacks in Paris, for example, the city started offering

active shooter response training for businesses and communities, Chief Turner says.

“All the tabletops that we can train for will never be all-inclusive. We have to continue to adjust our

policies, our procedures and our training techniques so we can mitigate what’s being pushed out there in

front of us,” he adds.

 

 

Managing Traf c,

Managing Traf c,

Managing Security

The smart management of traf c and smart parking initiatives will save 4.2 billion man-hours annually by

2021 – equivalent to one working day per driver per year, according to Juniper Research’s study Worldwide

Smart Cities: Energy, Transport & Lighting 2016-2021. The report notes that the establishment of viable

public transportations to replace private vehicle use, in addition to millions of smart parking spaces, will

service to improve private and commercial vehicle ow.

According to research author Steffen Sorrel: “Facilitating the movement of citizens within urban

agglomerations via transport networks is fundamental to a city’s economic growth. Congestion reduces

businesses’ competitiveness, and contributes to so-called brain-drain.”he smart management of traf c and

smart parking initiatives will save 4.2 billion man-hours annually by 2021 – equivalent to one working day

per driver per year, according to Juniper Research’s study Worldwide Smart Cities: Energy, Transport &

Lighting 2016-2021. The report notes that the establishment of viable public transportations to replace

private vehicle use, in addition to millions of smart parking spaces, will service to improve private and

commercial vehicle ow.

On the forefront of this smart city movement in Columbus, Ohio. Winner of this year’s U.S. Department of

Transportation Smart City Challenge – a Silicon Valley-style bid for $40 million in DoT funding, plus a

wave of private sector investment – Columbus is working to improve the lives of its citizens through

technological advancement and thoughtful deployments to help both its economic center and its

underprivileged neighborhoods.

Columbus’s Smart City team will deploy solutions in four districts: residential, downtown, commercial and

at the city’s cargo-dedicated airport. But it was Columbus’s people- rst proposal that gained attention.

The city plans to install street-side mobility kiosks, a new bus-rapid transit system and smart lighting to

increase pedestrian safety and access to healthcare for traditionally underserved areas and neighborhoods.

According to Aparna Dial, Director of Energy and Sustainability at The Ohio State University and project

head for Smart Columbus, the goal of this project is to improve opportunities for success for all residents.

For citizens in the Linden Neighborhood, a low-income area with poor access to amenities, jobs, banks and

healthy food options, safe, reliable transit is absolutely essential to improving quality of life. Currently, the

area has few transit shelters, intersections with high crash rates and low street lighting. In addition, due to

low access to healthcare services, this neighborhood has four times the national average rate of infant

mortality.

The Smart Columbus project will bring in smart street lighting with ef cient LED lights, connected by WiFi

– which will also be available for citizens to use for free. Crosswalks and transit stops will feature

pedestrian detection technology. They plan to install traf c signals that communicate with vehicles so

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Claire Meyer is Managing Editor of Security magazine. Shejoined Security in 2012, after graduating from the Universityof Missouri in Columbia’s School of Journalism. As ManagingEditor, Meyer writes exclusive feature articles for Security andmanages the Security eNewsletter, as well as monthlydepartments such as Global News & Analysis and IndustryInnovations.

signals can adjust in real-time to the needs of commuters, as well as changing to clear the way for rst

responders. The signals will also be able to be controlled manually by city management of cials to clear

the way for evacuations or emergencies.

“At the end of the day, we need to remember that this is about moving people up the ladder of opportunity,

moving people forward,” says Dial. “Lack of transportation options really traps people into a cycle of

poverty with little or no options to escape. I feel that it’s our responsibility to provide reliable, affordable

transportation to all families – families of color, low-income families – because that helps broaden their

access to quality education and decent housing and good jobs… these are all essential elements of the

American dream. Everyone has a right to follow that dream.”