Line of Business
Analytics helps Edmonton police predict crime trends
Companies have long used business information tools to identify sales trends, the Edmonton Police Services hopes an analytics tool from IBM would soon not just report on crime patterns but also perform forecasting and prediction.9/28/2009 6:00:00 AM By: Nestor E. Arellano
The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) hopes an analytics tool from IBM will help the agency to not just report on past crime trends but also forecast and predict them.
The police force's phased business intelligence (BI) program began in 2005 and experienced some early gains.
Today officials and front line personnel can extract near real-time data from the system - and use that to produce trend reports.
But with the new forecasting capabilities - that kicks in sometime next year - the police service expects to get even more benefits from the system.
"Right now we can see where and when crime is happening and that helps us plan for better force deployment," said John Warden, BI project lead for the EPS. "But the ultimate goal is enhanced forecasting and prediction."
Forecasting and prediction, however, do not involve some science fiction movie-like capability to determine that a particular crime will occur at a given time and place, Warden noted.
Rather, the police service expects that by next year its business intelligence system would offer insights into such questions as:
- Which kinds of people and groups are committing crimes
- How are crimes being committed?
- What are the motives?
By inputting answers to these types of questions, the analytics tools would help the Edmonton police come up with trending models.
Page Navigation 1) Moving from trend watching to predicting. - Page 12) Analytics tool aid in crafting crime prevention strategies. - Page 2
3) Automated reporting and analytics get police teams out in the streets faster. - Page 3
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