The promises of Big Data, predictive policing and artificial intelligence hold a key position in the public debate for quite some time now. Optimists tell that it is possible to predict where criminal events will occur before they take place. This would implicate a major shift towards a crime and insecurity preventive society, feeding on our cultural longing for a secure future. Therefore we give algorithms and deep learning access to more and more aspects of our lives. But how realistic and desirable is the application of Big Data techniques in the area of security?
In this article we put focus on the research question ‘In which way can Big Data and predictive policing support good governance of security?’, that has led our study. By exploring the central concepts, the processes behind them and their results in the domain of public security, we conclude that there are only rather disappointing results from the application of these techniques: crime and insecurity have not dropped when the police and other organizations turned to Big Data techniques. Instead, many negative side effects occurred. We search for explanations in six central academic critiques on the application of these techniques in the area of security.
We have found several ways to guaranty principles of good governance in the application of Big Data techniques, but these require a firm paradigm shift on Big Data in general. The heuristics of security professionals should not be overshadowed by technological promises: the professional should always be in the loop, must understand the way predictions come into existence and must be able to correct flaws and bugs of (semi-)automated decisions. We conclude that safeguarding public security must remain human work in which Big Data techniques can assist.

Since winter 2014, Belgian is faced with a possible rolling out of power. Blackouts come without any warning whilst the duration and cause of it is mostly unclear. Rolling outs are usually planned by utility companies to put small service areas without electricity, to cope with a high energy demand that the utility companies can’t supply. This rolling out plan can prevent a larger blackout and should make people aware of the consequences of a possible black-out.
Given this situation, this paper presents the result of a study asking citizens about their self-efficacy and organizations of their own house hold to deal with possible blackouts. For this survey, 473 citizens have been interviewed in 2 Belgian cities. We asked about their own action to organize themselves and were looking at their expectations of the government.

Safety authorities in The Netherlands have the obligation to develop so-called risk-profiles. Risk profiles are probability-consequences schemes of all kinds of hazards (ranging from earth quakes to transportation and from floodings to fires in high rise buildings). To develop such schemes, various data sources could be useful. In this paper, we describe an approach to make use of existing database to reveal ‘new’ kinds of transportation-related risks. To this end, we combined publicly available public and private databases related to: hazardous materials transportation and Natura 2000 areas; congested areas and large scale public events; hazardous materials transportation and multi-functional areas.
Our approach makes clear that combination of existing databases has great potential for the safety authorities to develop their risk profiles, do their business intelligence and creating steering dash-boards for their own budget allocations.

The focus of this article is the relation between the factual conditions of the environmental quality of streets and neighborhoods and the perception of livability by residents.Through analysis of evaluation of environmental quality by residents, combined with observations by trained professionals of certain aspects of the environment (population, demography, type of housing etcetera) it was possible to identify the relations between the way livability is perceived, aspects of the neighborhood and household characteristics. By zooming in on the aspects environmental and personal security and safety the article shows how the environmental quality influences residents perceptions.