A modern office building with a clear view of Duisburg's inner harbor: this is where the future of the NRW police begins. Sustainable innovations are to be launched in the new Innovation Lab of the LZPD NRW. This is where creative minds come together and rethink the technical equipment of the NRW police force.
The workplace of the future
If you enter the more than 500 square meter premises for the first time, you probably won't think you're in the police department. The first thing you notice are the huge screens that completely cover almost all the available walls. The classic workstation with desk, desk chair and PC is only found here in isolated cases. Instead, the team is provided with armchairs, sofas and stools in modern colors, creating a cozy atmosphere despite all the technology around them. Everything works wirelessly and the furniture and whiteboards have castors so that the rooms can be rearranged as required. If you need peace and quiet for a task, you can retreat to an individual office, there are seating options on the stairs or the windowsill, or you can share a two-seater sofa with a table with a colleague and work on a common topic there. Workshops or conferences with up to 60 participants can also be held.
The technology also makes it possible to work together with people who are not on site. Unlike traditional video conferencing, the video walls give you the feeling of sitting in a room together, allowing you to coordinate with each other much better and actually work on a joint product.
All this should make it possible to approach things differently, think more freely about topics and leave plenty of room for creativity in order to keep pace with the challenges of digitalization. We bring people and the latest technology together in a pleasant environment. It's hard to imagine better conditions for creative work and producing concrete results at the moment," says project manager Helmut Picko.
Sustainable innovations
Not only are the premises in the Innovation Lab extremely flexible, so are the employees. There is only one small permanent team; everyone else only moves in for the duration of a project or development. For example, they are currently working on further apps for police smartphones. It could then be possible to record crimes on site using a cell phone. Another topic was triggered by the 2021 flood disaster: How can we make it possible for the technical equipment of the NRW police to function even when there is no electricity, no internet and no telephone line? This resulted in the prototype of the Cube, a flexible and mobile system that is specially designed to meet police requirements. The Innovation Lab will now focus on further developing the Cube and making it smaller so that it can fit into an emergency vehicle. All equipment and new developments are not only intended for use in the Innovation Lab, but should also be used by the NRW police in the long term.
Another task of the Innovation Lab will be to test products that are already available on the market and find out whether they are suitable for use by the police. The first test object is the Spot robot. It can theoretically be sent to places where it is too dangerous for a police officer, for example because gases have escaped or a building is in danger of collapsing. The Innovation Lab team will find out whether this works as hoped in practice.
Thomas Roosen, Director of the LZPD NRW, is enthusiastic about the new Innovation Lab: "Technological development is progressing rapidly, so we can't always move fast enough with conventional methods of project development. With the opportunities we have here, we can help shape the future."
