Open Source Geographical Profiling?

elander asks: "I've been searching for a while for anything to do with geographical profiling, specifically systems that narrow the search area in the hunt for serial criminals (burglars, robbers, rapists etc). So far, the only system I've found is Rigel, a commercial software package, only available through leasing from ECRI. I wonder, aren't there any Open Source alternatives? I'm about to (hopefully, last round of approvals is under way) build a crime scene information system for a Swedish police authority, based on Open Source, and I'd like to be able to offer something along these lines as a future extension."

Comments

google maps

[Fr05t]

I don't know of any, but this could be an interesting place to use google's map api :
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/

Re:google maps

[frenchs]

I think the question in the original post is a little vauge on details, so I can't be any more helpful than this. But how about something like the Chicago Crime Database, which uses Google Maps.

-Steve

Re:google maps

[dago]

only problem is that, as stated on this page, Sweden is not yet part of the USA (or Canada, UK or Ireland).

People make what they use.

[BigZaphod]

I don't know any hobbyist crime hunters, so I suspect that something like this is going to be pretty hard to come by. I know of people who listen to police scanners and such, but that's a bit different than a part time vigilante who also happens to be a software developer. But, hey, the world's a big place. You never know. :-)

Re:People make what they use.

[Otter]

I don't know any hobbyist crime hunters...

Actually, I was under the impression that most crime was solved by hobbyist engineers / crime fighters. Especially crime committed by arch-villains and extraterrestrials. You probably just think you don't know any because they haven't let you in on their secret identities.

Re:People make what they use.

[BigZaphod]

This is true and a good point. Do any of them use databases, though? Most seem to just go after one guy at a time and rescue to occasional stranded cat.

Re:People make what they use.

[JustOK]

Just load the punchcards into the Bat computer.

RTFP?

[Fr05t]

"I'm about to (hopefully, last round of approvals is under way) build a crime scene information system for a Swedish police authority, based on Open Source, and I'd like to be able to offer something along these lines as a future extension."

Geez people can't even be bothered to read the post anymore!

The parent should get -2 Troll to sink the comment rating to -1.

Contact Me

[CaptainTux]

Contact me at papillion at gmail dot com and I can definately help you out.

Fascinating idea, open source crime tracking

[ar32h]

This is something that has fascinated me for quite some time, but I don't have the time to start a project do build something like this. I'm interesting in combining tools such as those from Xanalys with ECRI.
I'd like to see geotagged items tossed into a Watsonish tool that then feeds something like Rigel. I'm not especially interested in crime tracking, but building the tracking systems sounds like fun.
Looking for correlation in apparently unrelated facoids combined with geographic representation and pattern finding. Who could ask for a juicier data mining project?

drupal cms

[NateSac]

Drupal is an open source content managment system. Drupal is modular, and very flexible, and you can develop custom themes very simply written in pure php. The reason why I mention drupal, is that theres a few contributed modules that sound like that you are looking for.

Location API provides the framework for location based, and proximty based searching.
EventFinder module uses this API to provide sitewide location based searches and more.
There are also two contributed map modules google maps, and geourl.

It seems like the basic functionatily you are asking for is already developed for drupal, It shouldnt take alot of work to throw these together to do what you want to do.

Sometimes you need to pay.

[DerekLyons]

I've been searching for a while for anything to do with geographical profiling, specifically systems that narrow the search area in the hunt for serial criminals (burglars, robbers, rapists etc). So far, the only system I've found is Rigel, a commercial software package, only available through leasing from ECRI. I wonder, aren't there any Open Source alternatives?

Why should there be open source alternatives? You have a fairly narrow problem domain with a very narrow customer base that requires specialized techniques... Exactly the last thing I'd expect to be found as OSS.

Frankly, I suspect you are doing a disservice to your clients by choosing philosophy over functionality.

Mosaic

[pr0nbot]

In the UK there is a software system called Mosaic which collates various sources of demographic information and allows you then to find out what kinds of people live at a particular address.

This is used by marketing departments and political parties to target their attention at those most likely to be responsive, e.g. the uneducated and poor (http://money.guardian.co.uk/creditanddebt/creditc ards/story/0,1456,1529921,00.html) or swing voters (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,142 8612,00.html)

(Positive uses of such systems, if there are any, don't seem to get any media attention.)

According to the PDF downloadable from this page it is available in Sweden also:

http://www.appliedgeographic.com/mosaic.html

The principles involved could inform the system you are building.