BOGOTA, Colombia ̶ During the XII Citizen Security Week, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) introduced the Safe Cities platform, a platform that provides tools to improve citizen security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The platform, which will be available starting the second quarter of the year, will offer artificial intelligence and data analytics tools to support cities in constructing and managing their citizen security plans. The platform is being developed through a pilot initiative with the city of Florianópolis, Brazil, and will allow municipal managers to:
- Make real-time diagnoses that integrate georeferenced data on crime, violence and fear, risk factors and institutional performance;
- Prioritize problems found in the city and highlight effective programs to address them;
- Coordinate diagnosis and solutions with education, health, social assistance, and urban development portfolios, promoting a multisectoral approach to security;
- Monitor programs implemented by the city and provide society transparency of results and the possibility of participation.
“Solutions like this one for digital transformation make it possible to respond to relevant challenges for society, such as citizen security, in an optimized way, opening up space for sustainable results. The model being built with Florianópolis has great scalability potential for the entire country and the region,” said Morgan Doyle, IDB Group representative in Brazil.
This initiative falls within the scope of the IDB’s Vision 2025 as part of its efforts to strengthen good governance of institutions and leverage digitalization to promote sustainable and equitable growth in the region. Over the last decade, the IDB and other international donor agencies have supported cities and governments at the state and federal level in developing a comprehensive approach to citizen security and in the search for tailored solutions.
Part of these efforts were seen during the Citizen Security and Justice Week, which took place from February 28 to March 3, in Bogotá.
Under the slogan “Police Transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Building the Police of the Future”, the meeting promoted the exchange of experiences and good practices in the processes of police transformation and modernization that countries in the region are implementing. The event was organized by the government of the Republic of Colombia, the IDB, and other strategic partners such as the Colombian National Police (PNC), the University of Los Andes and EAFIT University in Colombia, Rutgers University in the United States, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
The Inter-American Development Bank is the largest multilateral organization focused on building institutional capacity in the citizen security and justice sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 2011, the Bank has approved 31 operations in the sector totaling loans for more than $1.5 billion in 15 countries in the region.
