Law Enforcement in Manassas Park, Virginia, Tracks Vehicles and Calls for Service with Real-Time Data Solution

From law enforcement to public works and parks and recreation, the local government of Manassas Park, Virginia, is an independent agency that offers a full range of services to meet the needs of residents and businesses. Recognized as the seventh-safest city in the state, the local government and law enforcement strive to make Manassas Park a secure place for anyone to call home.

Chris Himes, the assistant city manager of Manassas Park, began an initiative to grant citywide departments access to geographic information system (GIS) data. The city had to scale back administrative services during the 2008 recession. So the city not only had to transition from its legacy system to help better integrate its siloed data systems, but it also needed the help of technology firm Blue Raster to provide GIS services for the initial migration and ongoing support. Blue Raster, a member of the Esri Partner Network, is helping companies tell their story through interactive mapping technology.

Himes says the immediate need was to get the Manassas Park police division's new fleet an automatic vehicle location (AVL) tracking component device inset for public safety vehicles and attach a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system for calls-for-service data. The legacy CAD system previously in use did not have an integrated GIS component. Himes began the search for a GIS product to give departments across the city access to GIS data.

Blue Raster tested and deployed ArcGIS Velocity, giving the city near real-time data and a map-based view determining the location and status of police vehicles as well as recording and plotting calls for service. The fully integrated component now gives emergency personnel a comprehensive picture of the city.

According to Himes, when he began his role with the city, the goal was to develop and implement a comprehensive IT Master Plan to dictate how the city would centralize all services and leverage GIS to enhance reporting, transparency, and performance management. After examining different options, Himes selected ArcGIS Online, Esri's web-based mapping software, because it offered multiple access points for GIS novices as well as city personnel with more familiarity.

"I needed to find a better common denominator, and that's where Esri was top of mind. It's just what scale of Esri did we need and what type of Esri product did we need," explains Himes.

The initial part of this project was the migration to ArcGIS Online from the previous software provider. All the stored data was still in a readable format in the third-party web application, and Blue Raster needed to convert it into a cloud-based GIS. Andrew Patterson, a GIS analyst with Blue Raster, says team members began by taking an inventory of all the data that had been delivered to them. Then, they went through the process of publishing the data and organizing it by department in ArcGIS Online. Overall, close to 100 GIS layers were migrated.

Blue Raster then began doing a one-for-one implementation for each city department in need of a geospatial viewer of Manassas Park data. The team had planning meetings with the departments that already had a GIS viewer to get an idea of what their needs were during the transition, such as determining what layers have been available to them and what layers were not in use.

"We then worked through implementing those needs into different ready-made applications using ArcGIS Experience Builder, so that from the [users'] standpoint, they have a named user, and they sign on to the same link every single time. It never changes, no matter how much we update it," says Patterson.

The next phase in this process was shifting the focus to the needs of Manassas Park law enforcement. Patterson explains they wanted to ensure that police had full usability with an AVL and CAD integration and a real-time solution, which is what led the group to ArcGIS Velocity. ArcGIS Velocity is a cloud-native add-on capability for ArcGIS Online designed to help users process and analyze real-time data feeds.

As the city had already invested in ArcGIS Online, the Blue Raster team believed this Esri solution would be the best option to provide the infrastructure to do near real-time, says Patterson. Also, with no dedicated GIS support, Himes liked that it would work in the background with no heavy oversight needed because it was a cloud-native solution and was scalable to fit the needs of the city.

"Because of the city's implementation of ArcGIS Online, if we were to use [another] near real-time solution instead of Velocity, we would have to have implemented an entirely separate infrastructure to use it," Patterson says. "I think the decision really came down to the cost of it. It made the most sense in every single box."

In addition, the City of Manassas Park already had a Microsoft Azure account, which would help with the Velocity deployment. Patterson explains that because Velocity is based on Azure infrastructure, it meant the city could use a cloud-hosted solution it was more familiar with as opposed to other services. As such, the costs of Velocity could be wrapped up in the city's annual spending for Azure. Blue Raster also had its own environments to test with Azure, so Patterson says everything fell into place.

The Blue Raster team wanted to test Velocity before deploying and putting it into production for the city. Patterson explains that Blue Raster team members were able to use their own cloud environments in Azure, acquire a test license for Velocity, and test all the development—from receiving the AVL to using Azure Event Hubs (a real-time data streaming platform).

The primary use for Velocity for public safety in Manassas Park is to have a geospatial viewer of the city map with all linked public facility schematics in PDF files and response mechanisms housed on one page. An integral part of this solution is live layer feeds with locational data from the AVL component that can be toggled on and off and is updated every few seconds. This is for officers who are logged on to their Cradlepoint routers, which provide network connectivity in the field and are responsible for the AVL feed, and have their mobile data terminal (MDT) activated.

One live layer feed provides near real-time data on active police cars. If a car is turned on, the location is plotted on a map and continues up to 30 minutes after the vehicle is turned off. The second feed is for the CAD dispatch system, which is designed for recording and prioritizing incident calls and identifying locations of field personnel, to show when a ticket is logged in to the system. When tickets are logged, the data is processed by Velocity and made available on a map to officers in less than a minute. Active events from the past 24 hours are also displayed.

"We are using Velocity so that whenever we log a CAD ticket, we only log it once. One of the concerns was, with the CAD, when a service ticket is opened, it sends a message once. When it's closed and no longer an active event, it sends a second message. So we wanted to make sure that we aren't getting two points for every one ticket," explains Patterson.

A dashboard was set up to log calls for service, which uses the live feed of CAD data and enables users to search and filter data; for example, viewing only calls for service for parking violations over a two-month period. The live feed lets users see active events, calls for service, and the locations of other active units.

The AVL component was rolled out to the police staff and police chief, law enforcement deputies, and E-911 employees, among others. The solution combines a dashboard and mapping interface to easily view data, and Velocity gives the ability to have data consumable in a GIS.

Patterson explains that because the police department data comes from different sources such as the Cradlepoint routers, the data does not easily integrate into a GIS. However, for both data feeds, there are solutions in Azure to receive the data and transform it into a GIS-type format. For example, AVL comes in as a coded message, and Blue Raster parses out the information needed to translate it into a more readable format. Then, it is pushed into Event Hubs, a standard connector from which Velocity can receive data.

An additional example is the police department is now able to gather data on when officers exceed a certain speed in their vehicle. Velocity gives Blue Raster team members the ability to enrich track data with movement metrics using real-time analytics. Patterson explains that they can trigger events and other information through Velocity, so not only is it receiving data, but it is also enriching it with more details.

"Now with Velocity, I can say . . . if it's accelerating or decelerating . . . with real-time analytics to make it useful and not just points dancing around the map," says Patterson.

Himes believes Velocity has shown the power of GIS-driven solutions in the city and what solutions are possible with Esri technology.

"From what it is right now, it is capable of giving [police staff] exactly what they need from an operational standpoint, and that's perfect for them," says Himes. "But I think if you show that utility just through [continual] enhancement and build-out, it's only going to get more buy-in and use of the service in and of itself."

Patterson adds, "In terms of goals for providing what was required from the city and what [it] desired with the initial rollout, we wanted to make it one-for-one and then improve on it. And having Velocity be a cloud-native solution that can provide both near real-time data delivery as well as enrichment, Velocity was [necessary] to be able to say, 'Hey, Esri can do all of this and more.'"

Moving forward, Himes has several ideas in mind for Manassas Park to enhance the use of Velocity and other Esri technology, including an elevated performance dashboard for managers across the city that allows them to incorporate their data with a mapping view. He would also like to proactively design more customized views for resident services and performance initiatives like offering the improved ability to report on maintenance issues in the city.

"Having Velocity really made everything else for this possible. It [lets] us possibly implement other Esri solutions for the city," says Himes. "It really is just your imagination mixed with . . . technology . . . and then . . . what the city needs in the moment."