Philadelphia Police Department Enhances Event Safety with GIS

The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) has spent nearly three decades expanding its use of geographic information system (GIS) technology. What began as a tool for mapping and crime analysis evolved into an enterprise GIS environment that supports operational planning, resource allocation, and collaboration across public safety agencies.

Over time, GIS became an integral part of how PPD understands activity across the city and supports decision-making. Built on an established enterprise GIS platform, personnel can access shared data, maps, and operational information across departments and partner agencies. That foundation proved especially valuable when Philadelphia prepared for one of the nation’s largest Independence Day celebrations. Rather than building a new approach from scratch, PPD was able to bring together dispatch information, field resources, and other operational data into a common operating picture for command staff.

Philadelphia is no stranger to large-scale special events. The Wawa Welcome America Festival is one of the city’s largest annual celebrations and is considered the largest Independence Day celebration in the United States. Spanning 16 days and offering more than 50 free events across the city, the festival culminates in a July 4th concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway that attracts hundreds of thousands of attendees.

For years, PPD has safely managed events of this scale through detailed planning, coordination, and on-the-ground operations.  Because Welcome America is designated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE), the department works closely with federal law enforcement partners, SEPTA Transit Police, the Pennsylvania State Police, and other stakeholders to ensure interoperability and data sharing for a secure event.

In 2025, that already complex operating environment became even more challenging. Alongside festival activities and normal citywide policing responsibilities, thousands of city workers were on strike and protesting during the celebration. As the volume of information, personnel, and operational activity continued to grow, command staff identified the need for a better way to monitor conditions, share information, and coordinate resources across agencies.

To support that effort, PPD set out to create a common operating picture that could bring together CAD data, automatic vehicle location (AVL) feeds, body-worn camera (BWC) activity, and GIS information into a single, location-aware view for decision-makers. Functioning as a real-time incident monitoring dashboard and virtual command center, the Common Operating Picture (COP) dashboard gave command staff visibility into changing conditions across the city, helping them coordinate operations and make more informed decisions throughout the event.

To create the Common Operating Picture (COP) dashboard, including the event map, supporting layers, and sensor integrations, PPD turned to its GIS team. Led by GIS manager Paul Woodruff and GIS analyst Michael Urciuoli, the team developed the maps and applications needed to support the event dashboard in just one week. Leveraging PPD’s existing ArcGIS Enterprise environment, they were able to integrate information from multiple operational systems and support real-time data streaming across the organization.

The dashboard was designed specifically around the needs of command staff. Using ArcGIS Dashboards, the team transformed multiple operational feeds into a single, location-aware view that could be monitored from the virtual command center. By visualizing information geographically and updating it in real time, staff maintained awareness of both incidents and available resources throughout the city. This shared view supported faster coordination and more informed decision-making as conditions changed throughout the event.

To support July 4th operations, the dashboard displayed:

• Real‑Time AVL Integration: Displayed the locations of active AVL units, with vehicle status updated every 15 seconds to show whether personnel were on scene, en route, or available.
• BWC Integration: Included a list of body-worn camera locations, symbolized by operational status (buffering, recording, etc.), providing real-time visibility into officer locations and activity.
• CAD Integration: Displayed priority incidents from the CAD system, with symbols indicating call priority, allowing rapid identification of high-priority incidents.

Built within PPD’s ArcGIS Enterprise environment, the dashboard was designed to be flexible and scalable. New data sources, operational layers, and event-specific information can be added as needed, allowing the department to adapt the solution for future public safety operations without starting over.

The GIS team successfully implemented the Independence Day dashboard, enabling a virtual command center that provided real-time situational awareness throughout the July 4th celebration. Event commanders were able to manage operations more efficiently, allocate resources effectively, and respond to incidents in real time, improving overall event management.

PPD leadership quickly recognized the dashboard’s value as a repeatable operational tool, and the team identified opportunities to use it as a template for future events.

As Philadelphia prepared for major events such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the United States (250th anniversary, the dashboard provided a framework for supporting increasingly complex operations. During this period, the city hosted multiple overlapping security events, including six World Cup matches—one scheduled for July 4th—alongside an expanded Welcome America Festival and parade route. More than one million international visitors were anticipated to travel through the city, placing additional demands on coordination and operational planning.

Looking ahead, the GIS team continues to identify opportunities to expand the dashboard’s capabilities. Proposed enhancements include expanded pre-event planning layers for road closures, staging areas, parade routes, and personnel assignments; crowd estimation capabilities; and the integration of live or near real‑time video feeds from body-worn cameras, fixed cameras, and drones.

What began as a rapid response to a single high-risk event has evolved into a lasting operational capability. By standardizing its real-time GIS approach to large-scale event operations, the Philadelphia Police Department established a scalable framework that can continue to support future public safety missions across the city.