Evans & Chambers Technology

Predictive Software May Forecast Crimes

Last week, I attended the NIJ Conference 2010 and sat in on a fascinating session: “How Predictive Policing is Changing the Law Enforcement Landscape.” Predictive Policing has interested us at Evans & Chambers for some time. We do a lot of work with law enforcement agencies, and Predictive Policing is the newest movement in policing and is the marriage of law enforcement and technology.Think for a moment of old police shows and movies in which police officers use pushpins and a big wall map to visualize the locations of previous crimes. This is the traditional method of policing: manually analyzing past events and looking for patterns to emerge. The new methods use the past events, too, but new software and technologies can be used to predict areas where future events might occur. This allows officers to focus attention in those “hot spot” areas, with the goal of focusing police efforts in the hot spot area and perhaps catching the criminal in the act.At the Conference, Lieutenant Raymond Guidetti, Manager of the Regional Operations Intelligence Center, New Jersey State Police, explained how the predictive software operates and talked about successful applications of this software in New Jersey.The software combines areas of interest, past events, and factor data to determine the future hot spots where crime is more likely to occur. Factor data comes mainly from open-source data, and might be information about how far a robbery occurred from a landmark like a bar, bus stop, or even fire hydrant. The software then finds other areas on the map with “geospatially similar” features, which may be used to predict a higher likelihood of crimes in that area.This process has been successfully used to predict shootings in Jersey City, NJ. Jersey City officers plotted previous shootings on a map, and ran an assessment using predictive software. The software highlighted areas with geospatially similar features, highlighting the hot spots that indicate a higher likelihood of future shootings. Police were then able to allocate resources to those areas indicated by the software. In order to test the accuracy of the hot spots, the next three instances of shootings were plotted on the map. All three were located in the hot spot areas indicated by the predictive software. In one particular hot spot, no previous shooting had occurred. Without the software’s identification of the area as a hot spot, the police would have had no reason to suspect that a future shooting would occur.There are quite a few other success stories of the software’s accuracy in Philadelphia, PA and in cross-county commercial robberies in New Jersey. This research is promising for the future of law enforcement and Predictive Policing. Evans & Chambers will continue to follow the latest news as Predictive Policing technology develops.

What’s the 411 on Information Sharing?

We at Evans & Chambers have one thing on our minds lately: Information Sharing! OK, it’s not exactly glamorous, but it’s a big part of our work and something we feel pretty passionate about.

After the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11, a group commissioned to study the attacks noted the Government’s lack of response to important, known information about the attacks. In essence, important information that could have predicted the attacks wasn’t communicated to those that could have put pieces together to prevent the attacks.

Ever since, we’ve seen a number of government initiatives aimed at increasing information sharing in order to improve our homeland security. Sharing would allow federal intelligence agencies to communicate important information with each other – information such as whether a person is affiliated with a terrorist group or whether terrorists fund a particular organization. Ideally, we’d like to see a system that allows intelligence centers to utilize the latest technology to “communicate” important information.

Information Sharing as a whole isn’t easy; it requires a meeting of the minds, a standardization of languages that allows separate systems to communicate, and the technology to make it happen seamlessly.

But this topic is so important to us that contributing to successful information sharing is the goal of much of our work. We’re so involved that we’ve recently set up our own blog and newsletter to help spread the word about the latest happenings in Information Sharing. We hope to make a difference in this field by contributing to the wealth of information already out there.

We hope that you will take some time to view our new Share411 blog, check out the upcoming conferences and educational opportunities related to information sharing, or subscribe to our monthly newsletter on Information Sharing in Government. Included in the newsletter are job opportunities, so that you can make a difference in Information Sharing, too!

Cloud Computing 101

So, you’ve heard or read about cloud computing, but exactly what does this term mean? Here, we’ll explain the concept, and compare it to a process you may already be familiar with. We’ll also discuss some pros and cons to cloud computing.

“Cloud computing” refers to the way data, software, and applications are managed, organized, and accessed. It is a mechanism for the delivery of services. Cloud computing service providers provide space for customers, including individuals, businesses, and governments, to store information, software, and applications off-site. No standard definition exists, but The National Institute of Standards and Technology lists the characteristics of cloud computing as “on-demand self-service, broad network access (internet standards based), location independent resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.” As an illustration of the concept of cloud computing, think of how your home computer houses your software and data including important documents and family photos. When thinking about backing up your data, you might consider a virtual backup service such as Mozy or Carbonite. These services maintain your data on their servers, which you can access over the Internet, from any computer. The virtual backup service might represent the experience you have when accessing data on a cloud: your data is stored on another server, and you are able access and retrieve your data at any time through an Internet site. You may have already worked off a cloud before without realizing it. Google Docs, Facebook, and Skype, are examples of applications that are hosted using cloud technology. As the technology advances, it’s possible that cloud computing may even eliminate your need for a hard drive in the future.

Cloud computing may prove most valuable for companies and governments. Currently, companies purchase huge amounts of hard drive space and servers to store volumes of data. In addition, companies must have enough computing power to host public websites and private intranets. Because of the size of space needed to accommodate additional users or an increase in users at a particular time, companies must invest in additional space than that which is actually used at any one point in time. Organizations, including government agencies like GSA, NASA and Navy, are working to evaluate the cloud’s usefulness for decreasing costs by reducing the need for hardware, software, IT personnel, physical space, and maintenance. In cloud computing, a company can also take advantage of the processing power of the cloud for increases in website traffic or large calculations. In this way, additional resources can be purchased as needed, rather than in the traditional model where maximum space is purchased, but not necessarily consumed. As with any technology, there are possible drawbacks, and with cloud computing: it comes down to privacy and security. Once data storage and management is transferred to an outside party, the owner loses a certain amount of control over that data. In addition, the owner can no longer take full responsibility for the security of the data and may experience increased opportunities for a security breach. To state it simply, since the owner can access it’s data from any location, it’s possible that others can, too.

Now that you’ve got a solid understanding of what’s at stake, what do you think? How would you feel about cloud computing solutions if you were the company or government agency? Share your thoughts or questions in the comments section below.