The Center for Advanced Public Safety (or CAPS; http://caps.ua.edu) is a center of research at the University of Alabama. Formerly known as the CARE Research & Development Laboratory (CRDL), CAPS uses leading edge technologies to offer products and specialized software development services in a variety of areas, particularly traffic safety, law enforcement and homeland security.
CAPS is a rapidly expanding operation with a growing staff. Dr. Allen Parrish, the Director of CAPS, heads the organization and Dr. David Brown serves as the Director of Development. A number of other Computer Science faculty members are also involved with CAPS projects. In addition, CAPS has several full-time professional staff members that include developers and managers. CAPS also employs a host of graduate and undergraduate students and sometimes contracts private consultants.
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The original product of CAPS was CARE, a data analysis software system that has been applied primarily in the field of traffic safety but can be applied to other types of data as well. CARE has been implemented in 10 states.
CAPS has designed an electronic citation form for use by law enforcement officers in the state of Alabama. eCite provides the capability to efficiently issue traffic citations using productivity aids such as driver license scanning and GPS. The eCite framework also links to driver background and driver history information through a secure Web portal. This Web portal, also developed by CAPS, is in use by over 10,000 officers and has been used in the solution of a number of high profile criminal cases. CAPS is also using GIS intelligence from this system to assist officers in planning enforcement activities in locations that are most likely to reduce the largest number of crashes, particular crashes involving injuries or fatalities.
In conjunction with the very successful eCite project, CAPS has also designed eSwear, a virtual swearing process where the officer swears to the ticket and the clerk confirms them on a computer kiosk after they biometrically authenticate into the system.
CAPS has developed or been involved with the following projects and activities: