Public Safety Data Portal launched, User-friendly website for police data & maps, data.tps.on.ca

Public Safety Data Portal launched, User-friendly website for police data & maps, data.tps.on.ca

Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - 5:10 AM
Business Intelligence & Analytics:  416-808-7777

A new Toronto Police Service data portal has been launched to the public to improve understanding of policing and provide the community with a transparent view of public-safety issues in their neighbourhoods.

The Public Safety Data Portal (data.tps.on.ca) provides unprecedented access to police statistics, including crime and traffic data at a granular level of detail. Data is provided in easily accessible maps and interactive dashboards as well as raw data for downloading, known as Open Data. 

“The Public Safety Data Portal is designed to help reinforce the Toronto Police Service’s principles of being actively accountable, establishing trust in the community and enhancing collaborations channels with the public and partner agencies to address community safety challenges," Business Intelligence & Analytics Manager Ian Williams explains. “Providing Police Open Data contributes towards collaboratively finding insights into data. The public will be able to analyze data through interactive dashboards, mapping applications and even download raw datasets for their own analysis. We have built capabilities into the tools that allow users to filter and extract data by date, neighbourhood or by specific categories in the data.” 

The first phase of the data releases includes 2016 Major Crime Indicators (excluding sexual assaults), a historical Homicide dataset from 2004 to 2016, Traffic Collision data, including events where a person was killed or seriously injured (KSI) as well as TPS Division and Patrol Zone boundary files. The data is provided in formats consistent with open data industry standards such as .csv, .kml, shapefiles and APIs, which people can use to develop applications and integrate data with other government data.

The portal was created as a result of the work done by the Transformational Task Force. Mandated to look beyond the way policing is currently done in Toronto, the TTF proposed a modernized policing model for the city that is innovative, sustainable and affordable. 

Recommendation #17 in the Action Plan: The Way Forward, commits to the use of open data for public safety. 

For more news, visit TPSnews.ca.

Kevin Masterman, Corporate Communications, for Ian Williams, Business Intelligence & Analytics