City of Pittsburgh

"CORBA and 'Street Smarts' Keep City of Pittsburgh Emergency Personnel Safe "

Contacts:
Cerebellum Software, Inc.
Jennifer Tamblyn
jen@cerebellumsoft.com
Manager, Corporate Communications
600 Waterfront Drive, Suite 250
Pittsburgh, PA 15222-4716
(412) 208-6554

Tools Used:
Sun Microsystems' Java™ 2 platform, Cerebellum™ version 1.2, Cerebellum's API, Sun 450 servers, Oracle® 7 databases, CORBA®.

Problem:
For Police, Fire, and other emergency personnel, historic information about the addresses that they are servicing can be lifesaving. For example, if the address in question has been visited 4 times in the past 30 days for domestic disputes, possible drug dealings, or recovery of a stolen weapon, emergency personnel would know to use an extra degree of caution. In Pittsburgh, this type of information has traditionally been kept in separate departments, divisional databases and servers across the city. "We had no cost-effective and time-efficient way to integrate our data or build applications from data stored throughout the enterprise," said John Staudacher, CIO, City of Pittsburgh, City Information Systems (CIS), which is responsible for entire City of Pittsburgh's enterprise information technology needs. Without easy access to this valuable information, emergency personnel had no way to know what dangers they might be facing when responding to a call.

Previously, to obtain crime and address history information, the police commander had to call CIS to submit a request. CIS would then write queries to extract the appropriate data from several disparate data sources, including 4 different databases on 4 different servers. These data sources stored Mayor's Service Center complaint calls, police records, building permits information, and 911 calls. The requested data would be merged, filtered, sorted, printed on paper and delivered to the police commander. This process could take hours, sometimes days, depending on the complexity of the information request and the workload of CIS. But CIS could not meet data requests within seconds, so emergency personnel were dispatched to locations with no knowledge of incidents at that location.

Under Mayor Tom Murphy, the CIS department was charged with meeting the goal of an "information-based police force." This required CIS to create an environment that would provide police and other departments with information when they need it, where they need it, and in a format they can use.

"We needed a technology solution that would enable us to provide City personnel with information when they need it, where they need it, and in a format they can use -- regardless of the number of different data sources. " added Staudacher.

Solution: "Street Smarts"
CIS and Cerebellum Software teamed to design an end-user application that would deliver information to police and crime personnel within seconds. The easy-to-use application, called Street Smarts, offers a Web-based graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to perform database searches by selecting appropriate criteria. For example, a police officer using Street Smarts can access a variety of useful information, including all the burglaries reported for a specific zone or address, crimes in the last 24 hours and the history of an address. With mobile data computers, Street Smarts can be used in the field.

The solution is based on Cerebellum Software Inc.'s Cerebellum v1.2, which uses CORBA and the Java 2 platform to enable operating system and data independence. CORBA is used within the Cerebellum product to provide a communications layer between objects on different machines that need to share information. The use of CORBA enables Cerebellum and the City of Pittsburgh to integrate data from the various databases for presentation through one simple interface, without actually moving the data from the original sources.

CIS contracted Cerebellum Software, Inc. to implement the software and to train the IT staff to use the product and to develop new applications that could quickly and easily access data from disparate sources. The development of the Street Smarts application took approximately two months from concept through final presentation. Cerebellum makes fast application development possible because it eliminates the data access and integration work necessary to build new applications.

Because of the secure and personal nature of much of the crime and address information being accessed, Cerebellum's GUI allows CIS database administrators to manage user access. The Street Smarts application was also designed to limit the information that would be presented to end users.

"Streets Smarts is a wonderful tool to assist the 911 shift supervisors on collect historical data about a residence and relay that information to the responding police,fire and emergency medical units in the field. We are looking forward to upgrading the system with more fields that would be helpful for our dispatchers, responding units and the 911 management staff." states Donna Duncan, City of Pittsburgh 911 shift supervisor. "We feel comfort knowing that we can ensure their safety by informing them of any known problems at a residence before their arrival."

How the System Works
After submitting the search criteria, the Street Smarts Web application uses Cerebellum's API (which also includes a C++/CORBA API) to provide the data access, integration, and output that matches the user's request. The necessary queries are designed using Cerebellum's single drag-and-drop GUI eliminating the need to perform SQL coding. The queries are saved and results are displayed by the new Web application.

The benefits of the new system are faster access, flexibility and security. During the Cerebellum implementation, CIS began to replace its older ATT 3B2, Novell, and Bull System servers with Sun 450s and migrated all the previous databases to Oracle 7. The queries are simply bound to the new data sources by using Cerebellum's GUI, and Cerebellum generates the appropriate code. No redesign of the queries is necessary.

Project Roll-Out
In early 1999, Cerebellum Software trained end users on the Street Smarts Web application. CIS developers and programmers plan to use Cerebellum for rapid application development in 1999 to help meet the information demands of the City of Pittsburgh departments and personnel. In addition, CIS is working to enable its 70 mobile data computers to use Street Smarts in the field.