Civil network

Civil network (Dutch: Burgernet) is a collaboration between citizens and police.

History

The project has been invented in 1993 by a police officer from Ridderkerk (The Netherlands) for the purpose of tracing missing children, catching (red-handed) criminals, finding lost elderly people, etc.

How it works

In Civil network, the police uses a voice message and an incident room, to share information concerning an urgent report, with a lot of citizens in the same time. In case of a Civil network operation, the participating citizens who live close to the place of the incident receive a voice message by phone. When a participant sees the criminal or the lost child, he calls the incident room, from where they will send some police officers, to the right place, thanks to the directions of the participants. When the criminal leaves the area where the participants have been called by the incident room, a new group of participants will receive the voice message. When a participant after a voice message calls the incident room, a computer directly marks the address of the caller on a map. In this way conversations with participants are not needed to trace the criminal. This gives the possibility to process the information given by the participants very fast, which makes it easy to follow the chased person. When the criminal has been caught (or not), all participants get a voice messages with the number of helping participants and the result of the chase.

Test successful

A test with Civil network, managed by the inventor of the system, has been executed in Nieuwegein (The Netherlands) from May 2004 until May 2005. On account of an extensive inquiry, the test has been found successful. Civil network now forms part of the normal tasks. At the moment the project only runs in Nieuwegein, but it has a broad social and political basis and for this reason the project will be extended step by step to the rest of The Netherlands.

Peculiarities

A peculiarity of Civil network is that the police has taken the step to share information with citizens, using a network.

External links

• The Civil network site
• Animation about Civil network