Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS) has announced new enhancements to its Hitachi Visualisation solution portfolio: Hitachi Visualisation Suite 4.5 now with Hitachi Visualisation Predictive Crime Analytics (PCA) and Hitachi Video Management Platform (VMP) 2.0. PCA is the first tool of its kind to use realtime social media and Internet data feeds together with sophisticated analytics to gather intelligent insight and enhance public safety through the delivery of highly accurate crime predictions.

Hitachi Visualisation is part of the Hitachi Social Innovation solutions that support smart city programs, and is specifically designed to advance the public safety initiatives of cities and municipalities through the application of predictive and advanced analytics and improved access to video data.

“Public safety and the protection of people, property and infrastructure is a foundation of smart cities and societies,” says Ruthbea Yesner Clarke, director of global smart cities research at IDC. “Digital technologies, like those from Hitachi Data Systems, that provide real-time, aggregate and contextual data, support public safety initiatives that can transform how law enforcement and other first responder agencies locate, mitigate and prevent crimes, and ultimately make our cities safer places.”

Hitachi Visualisation software and hardware systems are purpose-built to help public and private entities accelerate extraction of rich, actionable insights from all of their data sources. The solutions are part of Hitachi’s Social Innovation solutions portfolio, which is committed to the development of smart societies that are safer, healthier and more efficient, while delivering better business outcomes for its customers.

Hitachi Visualisation Suite (HVS) is a hybrid cloud-based platform that integrates disparate data and video assets from public safety systems—911 computer-aided dispatch, license plate readers, gunshot sensors, and so on—in real time and presents them geospatially. HVS provides law enforcement with critical insight to improve intelligence, enhance investigative capabilities and increase operational efficiencies. Along with capturing real-time event data from sensors, HVS now offers the ability to provide geospatial visualisations for historical crime data in several forms, including heat maps.

This feature is available in the Hitachi Visualisation Predictive Crime Analytics (PCA) add-on module of the new Hitachi Visualisation Suite 4.5 software release. Blending real-time event data captured from public safety systems and sensors with historical and contextual crime data from record management systems, social media and other sources, PCA’s powerful spatial and temporal prediction algorithms help law enforcement and first responder teams assign threat levels for every city block.

The algorithms can also be used to create threat level predictions to accurately forecast where crimes are likely to occur or additional resources are likely to be needed. PCA is unique in that it provides users with a better understanding of the underlying risk factors that generate or mitigate crime. It is the first predictive policing tool that uses natural language processing for topic intensity modeling using social media networks together with other public and private data feeds in real time to deliver highly accurate crime predictions.

The new Video Management Platform (VMP) is an appliance-based solution that offers rich data integration, management and visualisation for video applications powered by VMware software. Using Hitachi-supported hardware and designed to deliver a set-it-and-forget-it user experience, VMP provides a turnkey, end-to-end video management solution that is both highly scalable and redundant, separating storage from compute to give users on-demand access to and rapid deployment of video assets. VMP supports every major video management software supplier to simplify storage and compute of all types of video data.

“Our initial Hitachi Visualisation release was designed to give law enforcement, emergency management and other security organizations greater situational awareness and the capacity to more effectively and efficiently extract insights from a broader range of data sources to ensure faster response times when a situation developed,” says Mark Jules, vice president, Public Safety and Data Visualisation, Hitachi Data Systems.

“Today, we are empowering them with the ability to take a proactive approach to crime and terrorism, and continuing to innovate around how data is captured, transmitted, analysed and stored – including video assets. Public safety is a fundamental pillar of our vision for smart cities and societies. We’re proud to be supporting the development of smarter, safer, healthier and more efficient communities by empowering them with the ability to proactively address public safety issues, rather than react to and investigate them after the fact.”