Ground-breaking use of GIS mapping technology nets Devon & Cornwall Police prestigious award
Devon and Cornwall Police have won a prestigious Geospatial World Excellence Award in the category of Public Safety for their ground-breaking use of geographic information system (GIS) technology for security planning during the 2021 G7 Summit.
Devon & Cornwall Police are being celebrated for their innovative use of GIS software to enhance safety measures during the annual gathering of policy leaders from seven of the world’s major democracies, hosted in Cornwall during June 2021. The Force combined MapInfo Pro, a powerful desktop mapping solution, with third-party visualizations to create precise 3D digital models of the G7 sites. Those models were then used to plan the police and security operation.
Robert Goldsmith, Senior Mapping GIS Officer for Devon and Cornwall said:
“We’ve been pioneering the use of GIS technology for a few years now, but we stepped it up a notch for G7 and it definitely played a significant part in helping the event go off without any security issues. We’re very proud to have won this award – it’s a tribute to the hard work put in by the team and shows just how valuable this kind of technology can be. We were nominated by Precisely, who make the MapInfo Pro software we use, and I’d like to thank them for their help in putting our award submission together.”
Robert continued:
“The tech isn’t just for high profile events like G7, there are real benefits for our everyday policing work. We use a combination of drones and a 60k LiDAR scanner to provide detailed scans big outdoor venues like football stadiums or festival sites as well as crime scenes, giving officers the means to carry out detailed analysis on their laptops without having to physically visit a location. That can save huge amounts of time when planning large operations like G7 as well as helping with investigations. The accuracy of the 3D models we can create is incredible, there’s just a handful of millimetres difference.”
The award was presented at a ceremony in Rotterdam on May 5th.
