UAE Prevented Over 50 Suicide Cases In 2024 With 'Crime Map', Top Official Reveals

He was speaking at the AI Everything conference that began in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. The Crime Map initiative is a collaboration between the UAE Public Prosecution and the cybersecurity department.

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“With algorithms based on the history of the crimes and global trends, [the map] predicts crimes and gives us notifications and reports,” said Salem Ali Juma Al Zaabi, head of Emergency, Crisis, and Disaster Prosecution at UAE Public Prosecution.“We are working directly with the Cybersecurity Council. We are also trying to push our imagination to be ready for new acts of crime.”

Al Zaabi added that one of the biggest obstacles for the government entity has been keeping up with the ingenuity of criminals, and Crime Map helps with this aspect.

“We have to collaborate internally or internationally, with several entities, to predict crimes so that we can be ready, and understand new acts of crime when it occurs,” he said.“And we have to keep the prosecutors ready, thinking proactively, in order to investigate such crimes. How can you investigate something that you don't know or are not ready for?"

However, Al Kuwaiti added that privacy and security of information is of utmost importance to the country.

“It is our number one priority,” he added.“Many of the people who are monitored did commit or initiate something previously. We do an analysis based on data and history, and it gives a very good rate of prevention in that perspective. We use our data in a very clear, specific, governed type of framework.”

He added that in a lot of cases, cameras around the country come in handy.“After the crime happens, we go and investigate,” he said.“But, we want to prevent that. That's why we use these AI models and machines to try and actually give us early warning indicators. We then go get court orders or subpoenas, in order to focus on a specific indicator that we've seen.”

Al Kuwaiti also gave some insights about cybersecurity in the country.“We have, at least on average, more than 200,000 attacks on a daily basis,” he said.“This includes social engineering and phishing.”

“We use a Next Generation Security Operations Centre, which is an AI-empowered centre that allows you to automatically stop more than 90 per cent of those attacks,” he said.“There are patterns and indicators of compromises. These attacks even have a 'behaviour' that you can detect early, which we call an early warning system.”