How Namola can Help Make South Africa Safer

Namola is a smartphone application that dramatically improves police dispatch times and the communication between officers, the control room and citizens.

It was recently launched in the City of Tshwane with the Tshwane Metro Police Department.

This app allows users within the City of Tshwane to send an alert with their GPS coordinates directly to nearby Tshwane Metro Police officers. The first available officer is then directed to the citizen’s location.

Here’s how Namola can make our lives safer

  1. Faster Response Times

Without Namola, a good police dispatch time, the time it takes from a call to come into a control room to a vehicle to start moving, is around 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

This is because it takes time to explain where you are and the nature of the emergency. Not an easy thing to do when you’re in a panicked or life threatening situation.

With Namola a dispatch time takes around 13 seconds — an 11 times improvement. All it takes is for a user to open the app, click the alert button and an officer to accept.

The built-in GPS functionality of the tablets mounting inside of the Metro Police vehicles directs the officer to your location. Saving them time and preventing them from getting lost.

Faster response times means that more crimes-in-progress can be stopped.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6icvcxyc6g

  1. Improved Communication

Namola creates a complimentary new communication link between control rooms, officer’s and citizens.

With the Namola control room system, the Tshwane Metro Police control room operators are now able to track all vehicles, and monitor and intervene on active alerts.

For the first-time operators are able to send images and messages, like a photo and description of a stolen vehicle or missing child, to the officers on the ground.

When a citizen sends an alert and an officer accepts, the user is able to send messages directly to the officer and the control room. If necessary, the officer is able to phone the user directly from the vehicle.

Improved communication helps the police understand what kind of incident is being responded to. This ensures that the correct resources are being provided.

  1. Accountability

The control room is able to monitor the location of all Tshwane Metro Police Vehicles fitted with Namola tablets as well as alerts in real-time.

Logs on where vehicles spend their time, which officers are accepting or rejecting alerts and how much users rate their responding officer are kept. These records ensure that the good officers are able to receive the praise and recognition that they deserve.

  1. Aggregation

Namola has been launched with the Tshwane Metro Police department as a starting point. The intention is to expand Namola to other security and policing services to create an alignment of crime-fighting resources.

We would also like to include other emergency response services such as ambulance, fire and tow truck drivers to give citizens a single place for them to get the assistance they need, faster.

  1. More Effective Allocation of Resources

By overlaying historical maps of crime hotspots and where vehicles spend their time can create a very informative picture of where more police officers are needed.

A more effective allocation of resources means that more crimes can be prevented and more arrests can be made with the same number of police officers that we have on the ground today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cAXL_T_7To

Namola has been implemented by Happimo, a non-profit company that helps government solve citizen problems using technology.