The Cape Town Central City Improvement District’s (CCID) Safety & Security department has upgraded its incident reporting system in a bid to improve its crime prevention efforts in the Central City.
Officially introduced in May, the new system is an improvement on the existing one and is aimed at streamlining and enhancing the work of the CCID’s Safety & Security team. It enables the logging of incidents and extracting reports on a very granular level. It also has full communication and notification capabilities with email and SMS options. Notifications can be sent to the relevant person who can then be deployed or who can then in turn deploy another person to the site at which the incident occurred. In addition, the system allows for notifications of the main incident or any updates to be sent to selected individuals either through SMS, email or both.
Says Muneeb “Mo” Hendricks, manager of CCID Safety & Security: “An upgrade on our incident reporting system is something we have been working on since 2017.
“Because we strongly believe that, to get the most out of any system, you must get the basics right, we first implemented extensive training on the system for our controllers in the CCID’s 24-hour call centre and, thereafter, our management team also went through training. Once we were satisfied with the tests and training, we switched over to the new system in May 2018 and the results have been significant.”
The new incident reporting system’s advantages include instant and live consolidated reporting, increased efficiency for team members, being able to get an instant view of incidents as well as being able to access the status of incidents remotely, basically from anywhere in the world.
Mo further explains: “The new system enables us to do so much more. Any member of my management team can view incidents that are reported by members of the public, either via an app on our cellphones or on our desktops. We also have the ability to instantly log incidents we ourselves see in the CBD (be it a security-related issue, social or urban management), take pictures and send them on-the-spot to our 24-hour call centre controllers, who will then take appropriate action. We can even assign an incident as a task to the relevant person listed on the system or we can alert the relevant department within the CCID to attend to the issue or alert our partners in the City. We can also see when the matter has been attended to and pull the full report if a member of the public requests information about an incident.
“What is also significant is that - because a GPS is incorporated into the system - when pulling out statistics, we’re able to see the exact location where incidents occur, the time of day and on which day of the week. Geotagging also enables us, when required, to easily pull out statistics on specific categories of crime or incidents and where they occurred. Essentially, in an environment as dynamic as the CBD, all these improvements in our system go a long way in ensuring we’re a step ahead in the services we render to the Cape Town CBD, together with our primary partners. In addition, we’ll be able to ensure our information is accurate, which will, in turn, continue to enable us to plan more effectively when allocating our resources.”
While the incident reporting system is currently being utilised by the CCID’s Safety & Security department, in due time it will be implemented by the CCID’s two other operational departments, namely Urban Management and Social Development, and will also enable the organisation’s Communications department to seamlessly collaborate across all departments to promote the work of the CCID and encourage investment into the Central City.
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