Artificial Intelligence will help combat violence

With the constitutional right to 'come and go' threatened, now not by the pandemic, but by the rise in crime, the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) decided to resort to its 'arm' of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for formulating public security policy proposals, in principle, aimed at the State of São Paulo, the richest in the country and one of the most affected by the violence.

On this occasion, the 20th FGV Eaesp Center was installed – resulting from a partnership between FGV and the Research Support Foundation of the State of São Paulo (Fapesp), University of São Paulo (USP) and São Paulo Public Security Secretariat (SSP-SP) – which should bring together researchers and security agents public. Through FGV Analytics, artificial intelligence tools will be used to build proposals in the area of ​​public security.

“The installation of a security policy study center is excellent news for both the academic community, the government sector and the population of the State”, stated the President of the Superior Council of Fapesp, Marco Antônio Zago, during the FGV Analytics launch event, this Monday (23), at the São Paulo School of Business Administration (Eaesp/FGV).

By emphasizing that initiatives aimed at public security are numerous and necessary, Zago highlights that it includes components special aspects, such as the mobilization of the academic community, with the aim of examining the social problem from the perspective of science, technology and innovation.

“Public security is not the exclusive responsibility of the State. It must be shared by all of society, as well as researchers. So, it makes perfect sense that this initiative is supported by Fapesp. Furthermore, FGV Analytics is an excellent example of Fapesp's new profile committed to public policies. Most of the projects that the Foundation supports are aimed at discovering new knowledge. But public policy projects go beyond advancing knowledge, as they seek to bring a solution to a problem, in order to generate a positive impact on society”, highlighted the president of Fapesp.

Through the use of technological tools, FGV Analytics researcher Roberto Speicys expressed the expectation that there will be an improvement in the efficiency of public security, in particular, with regard to the search for solutions to current challenges, as is the case in areas of open drug consumption, regions known as Cracolândia.

“These regions that are taken over by drug users affect the safety of citizens, businesses and homes. A major difficulty in tackling and characterizing these areas is measuring how many people are there, as it is difficult to know precisely the limits of these regions, which makes it challenging to assess the impact of public policies since there is no visibility of how these actions affect reality in practice,” said Speicys.

The researcher also commented that FGV Analytics studies will allow data collection through drones and the use of AI tools to identify individuals and objects in images georeferenced. As a result, historical data can be used to evaluate the effects of public policies in the area of ​​security.

“Maintaining the history of this data is fundamental in formulating these actions in Cracolândia. However, carrying out this data collection periodically has a high cost. In this scenario, if we automate the collection of this data through technology, it becomes more viable to collect information and guide the formulation of public policies based on them”, concluded the FGV researcher Analytics.