Oakland builds real-time crime apps for residents, police
Residents can use the App to check for incidents in their neighborhoods as reports and responses are moved through the city’s 911 dispatch system.
Ahsan Baig’s first idea was to build a web app that Oakland, Calif., residents could use to check for incidents in their neighborhoods as reports and responses are moved through the city’s 911 dispatch system.
According to Baig, Oakland’s division manager of Public Safety Services and Business Applications, the Oakland Police Department came to his team asking for a way to publish its 911 call data. “They wanted to provide it as a spreadsheet,” Baig said. As it happened, however, Baig’s team was in the middle of a major GIS platform upgrade. “We looked the request and said, ‘You know, there’s a better way of doing this. We could put together an application that would provide you with more of the information that you’re looking for.’”
Baig turned to his primary GIS software provider – Esri – for help building the app, which was developed using Esri’s ArcGIS platform.
Three months later, in June 2015, the Oakland Police Department’s Calls for Service app launched. The web-based app allows residents to view incident reports in near-real time, either as point data on the map of Oakland or in tabular form.
