Calls made to the Delhi Police’s emergency response support system (ERSS), the 112 helpline, are a treasure trove of data for the law enforcement agency. Electronic data — gathered from 15,000 daily calls made to emergency helpline numbers and which is retained forever — is used by the police to map crimes and generate insights from the process. This data runs the engine that is the Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System (CMAPS). DCP (Operations and Communications) S.K. Singh, a veteran of command room operations who has been in charge of the emergency helpline for ten years, calls the ERSS’s command centre the “nerve centre” of Delhi. The 200 calls received within a span of 10 minutes on March 2 about rumours of violence in Khyala, an area in West Delhi, prompted Delhi Police to mobilise its “whole force” because of which the situation could be controlled within an hour, Singh said. The single emergency helpline number — 112 — was launched by Minister of State for Home Affairs G. Kishan Reddy on September 25, 2019 along with the new 6-storey ERSS facility in Shalimar Bagh. Throughout the pandemic, the facility has run at full capacity, fielding calls related to labour migration, starvation, social distancing, Singh said. The Crime Mapping, Analytics, and Predictive System (CMAPS) The Delhi Police uses the Crime Mapping, Analytics, Predictive System (CMAPS), developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). This system helps it identify and map crime patterns. “Suppose I want to know how many…
