Public Safety Decision-Making in the Context of Smart and Sustainable Cities

Prominent urbanization forces governments to rethink their management processes, incorporate new technologies and ensure quality of life through practices aligned with the concepts of smart and sustainable cities. With a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with commanders of two local police departments, this study investigated information orientation in the strategic decision-making process in the area of public safety in a small Brazilian city. The police departments have a limited ICT infrastructure to support the strategic decision-making process because their information systems are not connected. The results show that although the city of Pato Branco (Brazil) is considered a smart city in the area of public security, there are limited resources in several aspects of the police departments for the effective management of their ICT infrastructures. The impact of resource constraints reflects throughout the entire information use lifecycle - identification, collection, organization, processing, etc. - which fuels the strategic decision-making process. The implantation of an operations center could significantly reduce the effects of the problems identified in this research and further research may reveal the operational, technical, economic and financial viability of this proposal. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.