The Tenth Crime Mapping Research Conference

September 22, 2009 By: Art Kalinski

Several weeks ago I attended the 2009 Department of Justice (DOJ) Crime Mapping conference. This annual conference focuses strictly on crime mapping, GIS, statistical tools and related technology. Since it’s the only national conference related to crime mapping there was a wide array of presentations ranging from entry level mapping to very esoteric academic papers dealing with GIS statistical analysis.

This conference struck a nerve with me since I had personal experience with crime mapping early in my career with the Atlanta Regional Commission. GIS was still new technology and we were called in to help catch a serial arsonist that had set over a dozen fires. We were able to help fire investigators catch the arsonist by simply mapping the locations of the fires. Visual inspection of the distribution pattern helped the fire investigators focus their efforts on two suspects in particular. It wasn’t GIS magic, we just created a graphic that helped the inspectors visualize the events and ultimately catch the arsonist.

Of the 85 sessions, the conference had its share of similar stories but went far beyond simple maps. The keynote speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Groff of Temple University, set the goal of the conference “The Quest for Actionable Information.” She was followed by Ron Wilson a former police chief and head of the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety Program (MAPS) at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Ron had an interesting take on GIS and crime mapping. He said that just like DNA has advanced the capabilities of crime scene investigators, GIS had advanced the capability of criminal investigators and prediction. By studying crime patterns, investigators are able to solve crimes and ultimately get ahead of criminals.

There was an excellent session on 3D visualization by Sven Fuhrmann of Texas State University. He demonstrated how 3D holograms could improve the ability of SWAT teams to perceive a common operational picture. I’ve seen this holographic still image technology from Zebra technologies before. It’s impressive but I believe the holographic dynamic video display they are working on will be their killer app when it’s perfected.

Since there was a wide spread in experience and education among the attendees, I was happy to see some foundational presentations such as one by Dr. James LeBeau in basic cartography. I’ve seen many very worthwhile and complex GIS projects that looked terrible and gained no traction because of poor cartography. It’s frustrating to see months and even years of work ignored because of poor Powerpoints and/or poor cartography. You may be able to do some very sophisticated spatial and statistical analysis but if you lack basic cartographic skills to display the results of your work in a clear and compelling way you won’t have much credibility.

There were only 11 vendors in the Expo including: GIS focused ESRI, Pictometry, Oculus Info, GeoComm and consultants such as DBx Geomatics, SPADAC, Crimesolv and ECRI. It seems that at each conference I attend there is always some new product or twist on an old product that catches my eye and stands above the crowd. That was the case with a solution called GeoTime. As the name implies, GeoTime is a temporal display GIS from ESRI business partner Oculus Info, Inc. It’s a relatively simple concept that takes some work but the results really help with visualizing complex patterns and activities.

It’s difficult to explain in words or even as a 2D image what GeoTime does but I’ll try. The example below shows the migration of an oil spill in a tidal current. The ortho view looks like a mess of dots but the oblique view gives you a sense of how it looks as a 3D model.

Now imagine the 3D model as an animation growing out of a base map so you can see the movement over time. The oblique animation provides a much better sense of what’s happening: the back and forth action of the tides, the spread of the spill and the speed of the spread.


Click her for larger image	Click her for larger image

Another example that really showed off the potential was an animation of taxicabs, one of which was involved in a hit-and-run accident. The 2D GPS locator map was just a bunch of dots but placed into a temporal 3D model, the movements over time clearly identified the guilty cab driver.


Click her for larger image	Click her for larger image

What GeoTime does is not particularly earth shaking. In fact, I suspect that most of you could do the same with your GIS, Model Builder and Camtasia or other video creation software. GeoTime however is a very elegant solution that makes the process fast, easy and results in a very professional looking display and animation.

Most of the sessions dealt with mapping crime locations or gang activity but as a GIS curmudgeon I thought there were too many sessions that were esoteric graduate research projects of limited practicality in real police work. I know research has to be done to advance the body of knowledge but the titles alone sounded intimidating for us mortals. I felt especially bad for one police officer who I’m sure had a long honorable career pounding the pavement and perhaps because of age needed to get into a position that was less physically demanding.

I can picture his chief telling him “go down there and learn about this GIS Crime Mapping stuff.” The officer dutifully attended but then stepped into sessions dealing with Bayesian inference, regression analysis, clustering and Chi Square tests. I saw him later and he had that “deer in headlights” look wondering what he had gotten into. I felt bad for him and felt compelled to help. I took him aside and said please don’t be intimidated by some of these sessions and relayed a story of my experience when I first became the GIS Manager of the Atlanta Regional Commission.

I was fresh out of graduate school, knew a little but still had a lot to learn. An impromptu meeting occurred in my office with our planning director and a college GIS professor. Both were very experienced and they got into a discussion about, “Land Lots” which I later learned have a unique historical meaning in Georgia. Both of them discussed “Land Lots” back and forth for quite a while. Being new to Georgia regional planning I finally asked “What’s a Land Lot?” There was a very long pause, and then they both looked at each other and smirked. Neither one knew! I had exposed the “Kings not wearing any cloths.” We all had a chuckle since I now learned how the game was played. This is not a stunt I would have tried in the Navy but I guess it was the game de jour with planners and academics.

The police officer nodded in understanding. I said that basically people are mapping the locations of crime and seeing if any patterns develop. Some applications simply place the locations on a map and we use the human eye, judgment and gut feelings to see if there is a pattern. Some people however use GIS and statistics to do complex mathematical modeling to identify the same. Although much of this work is serious and important don’t hesitate to keep your BS meter running. There is a some of that also. I told him to get comfortable with the basics. That if he didn’t do any more than just map points in a GIS that would be a good place to start and he would look brilliant back at his police department. I think I did my good deed for the day.