The City of Atlanta has a population of over 420,000. It is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to more than five MILLION people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in the United States. Additionally, Atlanta is one of the United States’ leading tourist destinations, both for American residents and those visiting the U.S. from abroad. In 2010, the City was the seventh-most visited city in the United States with over 35 MILLION visitors per year.

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CNL Software Case Study
City of Atlanta - Safe City
December 2012

2. City of Atlanta
The City of Atlanta has a population of over 420,000. It is
the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan
area, which is home to more than five MILLION people and
is the ninth largest metropolitan area in the United States.
Additionally, Atlanta is one of the United States’ leading
tourist destinations, both for American residents and those
visiting the U.S. from abroad. In 2010, the City was the
seventh-most visited city in the United States with over 35
MILLION visitors per year.
Protecting Citizens
Ensuring the safety and security of citizens and visitors is key
to the success and progress of any city. This is especially true
for Atlanta, one of the most multi-cultural cities in the U.S.,
which is attracting investment from across the globe. As with
any large city, Atlanta is becoming more reliant on the use of
visual intelligence to enable improved situational awareness,
which helps to identify and resolve security incidents faster
and more incisively.
Over the years, the City of Atlanta has invested in a number
of surveillance systems to provide law enforcement and
other public safety professionals with visual intelligence, well
before first responders arrive on scene. Recently, the City
upgraded aging analog cameras to digital, and moved from
leased line to wireless backhaul. Historically, these systems
had all operated independently and had been located across
a wide geography.
Operation Shield
Government agencies across the U.S. are working hard to
increase collaboration on public safety efforts to achieve
better efficiency and effectiveness in leveraging public
security assets.
Oneofthemostcosteffectivemethodstoincreasetheamount
and quality of intelligence available to government agencies
is to deploy a centralized camera integration center. Atlanta
approached this challenge by launching Operation Shield in
2007, through the Atlanta Security Council. Operation Shield
is a three-pronged security program designed to leverage
existing infrastructure (cameras and radio communications)
through engaging the private sector and various government
agencies. The most recent development in Operation Shield
has been the establishment of a centralized Video Integration
Center (VIC) by the City of Atlanta Police Department. The VIC
is a rapidly-developing surveillance network which provides
24/7 real time crime prevention, emergency preparedness
and heightened response capability throughout the City.
City of Atlanta - Safe City
December 2012 Confidential © 2012 CNL Software Page 1
Dave Wilkinson, President & CEO of the Atlanta Police
Foundation commented, “The Atlanta Police Department has
a plan in place to utilize technology in its mission to reduce
crime. Atlanta has launched Operation Shield which will not
only leverage cameras, but also data and video analytics to
better fight crime bringing the crime numbers down even
lower than their 30 year low of today.”
Operation Shield’s three-pronged success formula; video
integration, COMNET (radio network for private security to
communicatewithAPDinrealtime),andtextalertsisenabling
VIC stakeholders to effectively bridge communication gaps
between the Atlanta Police Department, participating
agencies and entities and the City’s business community.
A Next Generation Solution
Grant Hawkins, Vice President of Programs & Strategic
Projects, Atlanta Police Foundation explained “The Operation
Shield team visited numerous cities throughout the United
States and was able to note best practices, lessons learned,
and be exposed to the latest technology in action. This
research and planning gave Operation Shield’s leadership
the tools and knowledge to design and build a system that
brings together key aspects of the best video integration
projects from around the United States to the Atlanta Police
Department with best in class tools and technologies to
reduce crime and respond to emergency situations.”
Facts and Figures
• 2,000 police officers
• 8,376 square miles
• 36,241 Victims of Crime 2011
• 35 MILLION visitors per year
• 420,000 residents in the City limits
• Over Five MILLION resident in Metropolitan area
• 9th largest metro area in the U.S.

3. To protect citizens, commerce and infrastructure, the City
needed to be confident that the tools and technologies
selected had been proven within the Safe City framework.
They selected CNL Software’s IPSecurityCenter as the
command and control platform as it was deployed in the
largest and most complex Safe City projects in the world.
IPSecurityCenter works by connecting the diverse range of
systems into the operating platform, ensuring operators do
not need to learn the underlying technology, allowing them
to focus on the situations that are occurring. The system
has given the Atlanta Police Department the capability
to integrate public and private video systems, video with
computer aided dispatch (CAD), into an integrated suite of
emergency dispatch applications allowing call takers and
dispatchers to manage incident information more efficiently.
Public/Private Partnerships
The Atlanta Police Department and the Atlanta Police
Foundation have accomplished their vision to develop
one of the United States’ strongest public-private sector
partnerships. Atlanta is becoming the model city for public/
private sector partnerships providing significant benefits
to the citizens and visitors of the area. City leadership has
leveraged the partnerships to deliver a sound foundation for
Operation Shield and is poised to expand its current state to
become the standard for Safe City projects across the nation.
In addition to providing funding and competencies, the
Atlanta Police Foundation has been instrumental in facilitating
the resolution of one of the biggest challenges faced when
establishing the Video Integration Center: addressing the
size and scale of the integration which is driven by the
disparate and legacy nature of video systems across the City,
other governmental entities, and the private sector. Using
IPSecurityCenter, cameras owned by organizations using
proprietary technologies, can be targeted for integration. For
example, the City’s Metro Atlanta Rail and Transit Authority
(MARTA) operates more than 1,300 cameras, which were
previously only accessible in the MARTA command center.
Likewise, Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, the world’s
busiest airport, had its own proprietary camera systems,
which will also be connected, to the Video Integration Center.
Similarly, and as is typical across the nation, the Georgia
Department of Transportation (GDOT) spent millions of
dollars deploying a statewide camera system which only fed
information into the GDOT Traffic Control Center. The City of
Atlanta is also home to two of the State’s largest universities
and 7 colleges, each with their own security systems.
As part of their vision, the City also wanted to integrate a
large number of private cameras located in the City, from
sources ranging from the CNN Center and Coca-Cola to the
December 2012 Confidential © 2012 CNL Software Page 2
City of Atlanta - Safe City
Publix Supermarkets and the sizeable number of Fortune
500 companies located in the City – further increasing the
complexity of bringing all of these systems into one common
platform.
Increased Situational Awareness
Once connected to the IPSecurityCenter platform, a common
set of controls will be available for all video sources, enabling
operators to seamlessly move from a camera located on a
downtown street to one located in a shopping mall to one
located in a bus station, allowing operators to observe
incidents as they unfold. Increasing the partnership with
other agencies, the Video Integration Center will be able to
instantly distribute and share this intelligence to all relevant
stakeholders enabling rapid responses following incidents.
Through development of one common operating platform,
the City of Atlanta is able to work with various agencies,
entities and develop protocols for preventing, detecting, and
responding to unfolding events. The information sharing
network provides a new approach to a safer city.
Increasing Efficiencies
Crime, by its nature, has significant costs to any city - Its
costs are far greater than the direct costs associated with
policing. Some of the key cost reductions resulting from the
IPSecurityCenter solution include reducing policing costs
through greater efficiency, reduced overall crime levels,
increased incarceration rates and faster prosecution through
the courts and legal system.
IPSecurityCenter also offers other involved agencies
significant capital cost savings because, by tapping into the
VIC, they do not need to bring their own infrastructure to
levels of tools and technologies now provided by the VIC.
The ability to access video from private enterprise furthers
the attractiveness of the return on investment for the system.

4. Dave Wilkinson, President and CEO, Atlanta Police Foundation
commented “We are leveraging the private sector investment
in cameras and infrastructure – making Operation Shield a
unique model - allowing the Atlanta Police Department, at
a substantially lower cost, to keep citizens and visitors safe.”
Intelligence Driven Policing
Operation Shield’s future continues to grow with APD’s
deployment of an Integrated Predictive Policing (IPP) Model,
which is transforming policing across the United States.
Predictive policing models are the newest tools for law
enforcement using advanced technological tools and data
analysis to take proactive measures to “pre-empt” crime. By
combining Video Integration, multi-agency crime data and
public records with other analytic technologies, Operation
Shield effectively provides crime reduction and accountability,
while serving as a force multiplier and increasing resource
efficiency.
IPSecurityCenter is enabling Atlanta to implement the IPP
model. It would not be viable to manage the vast amount of
video coming into the VIC without IPSecurityCenter’s ability
to intelligently catalogue, map and visualize the right video
at the right time with data elements already on file. One
unique feature of this system is its ability to integrate many
of the newest social media analytics. Officers and Detectives
identify emerging crime trends and are able to predict where
crimes are likely to occur by using social media analysis, data
mining techniques and other advanced analytics to identify
trends, major actors, associates, and elements of crimes.
Following an incident, when seconds count most, the
system provides exceptional connectivity tools allowing
camera images to be rapidly referenced against analytics
and data providing a clear picture to responders. Armed
with immediate situational awareness, operators are able to
respond to incidents with greater accuracy and can ensure
the most appropriate response to combat threats, crime and
anything that can jeopardize the safety of citizens, commerce
and infrastructure.
Police Commanders can more effectively manage resources
and deploy patrol officers in areas with emerging crime
trends and stop crime before it impacts a community.
Commanders issue crime-fighting strategies based on an
analysis of crime patterns, enabling officers to multiply
their capabilities through an expansive array of innovative
technologies including sensors, video cameras, license plate
readers, automatic vehicle location, geo-spatial correlation
and facial recognition technology.
December 2012 Confidential © 2012 CNL Software Page 3
City of Atlanta - Safe City
Visualization and Reports
Every agency has its own need for management information
and reporting. The system provides an enterprise level
reporting engine, automating and delivering effective
reports and statistics on overall system performance, device
availability, operational effectiveness and any of the SOPs
defined by the City.
IPSecurityCenter delivers a custom dashboard solution fusing
disparate security technologies into one common platform.
This results in reduced training time and greater operational
efficiency for the officers, police department and the City.
Citywide integrated data is presented geo-spatially on the
Operation Shield dashboard. This common operating view
provides domain awareness and a real time visual of the
City’s crime trends.
More than Crime Reduction
As with any enterprise level system, there is a constant need
to increase the system, in terms of the number of users,
geographic coverage and new functionality. IPSecurityCenter
allowsaneasymigrationpathtoincorporatenewtechnologies
such as gunshot detection systems, tracking systems and
smart video (like LPR) and analytics – all helping to enable
greater intelligence driven policing.
IPSecurityCenter offers integration capability allowing Atlanta
to lead the way in intelligent policing. It provides the City
with the framework needed to reach both public and private
systems, which is required to realize the City’s vision for
public-private partnerships in the foreseeable future. Soon
it will also allow Atlanta to make material improvements in
areas of public safety other than crime, such as flood plain
monitoring and fire and other emergency services, making
Atlanta a Safer City.

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Copyright © 2012 CNL Software. All rights reserved. IPSecurityCenter is a trademark of CNL Software. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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About CNL Software
CNL Software is a world leader and global provider
of Physical Security Information Management (PSIM)
software, designed for complete Integrated Situation
Management. Our award winning PSIM technology is
deployed to secure major cities, critical infrastructure and
global commerce. CNL’s software sits at the heart of some
of the largest, most complex and ground-breaking security
integration projects in the world. Our work with leading
organizations is helping to shape the future of security by
offering thought leadership on key issues such as asset
protection, energy reduction, process compliance and
business advantage in converged physical environments.
About IPSecurityCenterTM
IPSecurityCenter is the ultimate PSIM software based
integration and management platform. It connects and
manages disparate building and security technologies
such as video surveillance, life critical systems, radar,
analytics, HVAC, PIDS, GPS tracking and GIS mapping.
Through aggregating intelligence from these systems, it
allows organizations to react faster and more precisely
to incidents. IPSecurityCenter provides operators with
real-time Situational Awareness through a Common
Operating Picture (COP) and following an alert, alarm or
event presents step by step process guidance, ensuring
complete compliance to security policies.