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Issue Date: August 2003

GIS powers crime reduction project

1 August 2003

Cadcorp SIS - Spatial Information System from British GIS company, Cadcorp, is being used as the GIS engine for Project Jupiter, a UK regional government funded pilot IT project tackling crime and disorder, being conducted by West Devon community safety partnership.
GIS has a lot to offer the partner organisations involved in reducing crime and disorder. It is a powerful tool to integrate, analyse and output a wide range of valuable crime and socio-economic data in a highly effective, visual manner. Results of this analysis can be used to best target crime reduction resources to those areas that exhibit high and/or consistent levels of crime and anti-social behaviour. General disorder or anti-social behaviour usually shows itself in particular geographical locations, or what the police term 'hot spots'.
By plotting the incidents and overlaying information from Social Services, Health and the Local Authority for example, it should be possible to ascertain patterns and causal links that explain crime and anti-social activity. Once common areas are recognised the partner organisations can take action to jointly address the root causes of these problems and their resultant impact on a community.
On a tactical level, a sudden surge in incidents in a particular area would lead to the cross-referencing of a variety of data. It may be that data from a prison shows that certain persons were released to that area at the relevant time. The appropriate partners, for instance the Police and Probation Service, would then be able to investigate possible links. Formal data exchange protocols exist between partners to allow analysis in greater depth, whilst ensuring that the rights of individuals are protected.
Dave Anning, Crime reduction officer for West Devon stated: "The intention is to take a much wider view of tackling crime and disorder than previously. In particular, we are interested in establishing underlying causes. The police service deals with end results but has little information about those underlying causes. Much of this information can be obtained through other organisations such as health authorities and Social Services".
West Devon CSP is special because it is now the pilot site of Project Jupiter in Devon. The principle is simple enough. As many partners as possible provide information in the form of sets of data in various geographical formats. The data will have been 'cleansed' using Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) by the partners providing it in order to protect the rights of individuals. The data is all loaded onto a computer and the appropriate software is used to integrate, analyse and output the results in various ways. The data sets will all be geographically referenced in Cadcorp SIS so that colour overlays, graphs, etc, can be used to map the information.
Lee Braybrooke, Cadcorp account manager for West Devon Community Safety Partnership states: "The Cadcorp SIS range of mapping products supports over 80 GIS and database formats, making it ideal in situations such as this where data could come in one of the many GI forms. Using SIS, the Project Jupiter team can easily open and analyse the data without the need for data translation, a sometimes costly and lengthy process".
Anning continues: "We know that the use of GIS in this project is really only limited by our imagination. Furthermore, we can look to using GIS as part of our regular project reporting. Thinking ahead, use of GIS on the Web could be invaluable in distributing very visual analytical results. With appropriate access controls, partners throughout the Borough could access and use this data."
For more information contact Alan Plumley, Cadcorp, alanp@cadcorp.com


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