GeoSpatial Project / Urban Growth Simulator

This project combines several subordinate projects into one major effort in support of the National Institute of Justice. Its foundation is basic and advanced crime mapping techniques and training.  NIJ offers multiple free venues at two locations to assist law enforcement agencies build spatial crime analysis. CrimeStat is a tool designed to provide statistical summaries and models of crime incident data. The tool kit provides crime analysts and researchers with a wide range of spatial statistical procedures that can be linked to a GIS. The procedures vary from the simple to some very sophisticated ‘cutting edge’ routines. The reasoning is that different audiences vary in their needs and requirements. The program is of benefit to different organizations. For many crime analysts, simple descriptions of the spatial distribution will be sufficient with the aim being practical intervention over a short time period. For these persons, many of the advanced techniques provided in CrimeStat will be unnecessary. For other analysts, statistical tools can supplement a much larger GIS effort, such as the Regional Crime Analysis System (RCAGIS) that was developed by the U.S. Department of Justice in cooperation with a number of police departments in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area (USDOJ, 2000). For other researchers, even more demanding techniques may be needed to detect the underlying spatial structure as a means for formulating a temporal-spatial theory.  A pattern in and of itself has little meaning unless it is linked to some framework. The ability to quantify relationships with a large amount of data can address problems that previously were avoided and can be a first step in developing an explanatory framework or interventionist strategy. CrimeStat attempts to address both types of needs by providing statistics in a ‘toolbox’ framework.

Another Tool being developed is the Urban Growth Simulator which strives to identify/predict crime growth patterns as urban areas undergo rapid growth. It is anticipated that this tool, once perfected, will allow law enforcement agencies to anticipate problems as crime migrates and mutates, reacting by redistributing it patrol and investigation assets.

Crime Series Analysis Project

The National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center—Southeast Region (NLECTC-Southeast), which is funded by The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), partnered with Eastern Kentucky University to conduct research in order to obtain a better understanding of how locations at which crimes are committed may be modeled with sufficient precision.  This research is accomplished by utilizing centro-graphic measures to delineate an optimal area in which to search for the home or fixed base of a serial offender.  Other objectives of the research include measuring the distances offenders travel to commit different crime types.  Also considered are the influences that street characteristics and road layouts, in urbanized and non-urbanized areas, may have on the distances offenders travel to commit an offense.

It is hypothesized that the centro-graphic metric of Center of Minimum Distance is an optimal method for defining a search area from which to locate an offender’s home base.  The Center of Minimum Distance (CMD) is that point from which the sum of the distances to all of the crime scenes is the minimum.  Thus, if the offender lived at the CMD, the total travel to all the crime sites is minimized.  Error measurements and a control method will be set and the statistical significance of the method will be established.

The data to be used in this research will be collected from law enforcement agencies’ information systems and will include the crimes of murder, rape, armed robbery, arson, and burglary.  The data will present subjects who have been determined by law enforcement to have committed a series of offenses at four (4) or more separate locations.  The law enforcement agencies from which data will be collected will be characteristic of those serving urban, urban-extended, and rural environments.

Products of the research will include a final narrative report, a technical report, an assessment of the method, and a model for defining an optimal search area from which to look for the home or fixed base of a serial offender. The ultimate goal is to provide law enforcement with a no-cost tool to assist in the investigation of serial crime.