Providing Police Backup in Munich with GISIn the ever escalating battle between criminals and crime fighters, GIS technology has emerged as a new weapon of choice and has taken its place in the front lines along with other, more conventional deterrents. In Munich, Germany, Strassenkriminalität, or street crime, which accounts for more than 70 percent of all criminal activity, was increasing to alarming levels, requiring more and more resources from the City's over-extended police department. The causes of this situation were complex, resulting in part from both German and Eastern European criminals taking advantage of the open border between Austria and Germany for easy escape and the transportation of stolen merchandise. An attempt was made to manually compile criminal activity and plot it on a steckkarte, or a conventional map, using push pins. G�nter Okon, senior criminal investigator for the Munich Police Department (PD), describes the process. "We began each month with a new map. We tried to place each pin as close to the actual crime scene as possible, but it was often difficult. As we got further into the month and the map began to fill up, pins were regularly knocked off and it was hard to put them back in the correct place. This simple method did give us some insight into the benefits of crime mapping, though, and we began our search for a real GIS solution." In the spring of 1999, the Munich PD deployed their Geo-crime Location Analysis Display Information Service, or GLADIS, a GIS application that enables officers to combine statistical crime information with relevant spatial data to map and monitor high-crime areas. GLADIS, an expert system for crime mapping and analysis, was developed with Esri's GIS software including ArcView GIS, ArcView Spatial Analyst, and MapObjects. In the process of creating the database, every building in Munich, which totals more than 130,000 commercial buildings and residences, was georeferenced. On a daily basis, all incidents are geocoded and standard reports are generated to support police management. The application automates daily reporting and supports ongoing investigations. It also produces incident maps, from which crime clusters and trends can be analyzed for possible remedial action. Geocoded crimes can be related to other spatially referenced information like traffic and public transport, sociodemographic data, and historical occurrences. Therefore, using new analysis tools and methodology, more insight into spatial patterns, hot spots, crime shifts, and serial aspects can be found and visualized. Quick views of different aspects (space, time, frequency, type of offense, etc.) can also be produced and integrated in daily reports and briefings. The preprocessed data is added to an Intranet system that allows all police users of GIS and their offices in Munich to view, select, visualize, and print selected data. The data is structured by location, type of crime, date, etc. In addition, special density maps can be requested from a central ArcView GIS-based server and then automatically posted by e-mail. Using MapObjects Internet Map Server (IMS) software, GLADIS is distributed over the police department's Intranet service and allows each officer to create maps on demand by selecting areas of interest, crime types, and various additional sources of information such as reports and videos if available. This feature also enables the Munich PD to rapidly dispatch information from its central database. On the Intranet all additional information (reports, videos, pictures, links) are hot linked to the map display to be retrieved immediately. "Using GLADIS over our Intranet allows police officers throughout Munich to view the same updated information, providing them with an overview of crime hot spots throughout the City and the opportunity to determine if there are any connections between the various crimes," continues Okon. "It also gives the police officer the chance to look at criminal activity over time, which helps him predict developing trends. "In the next phase, all of our data will be brought into Esri's ArcSDE, and traffic incident reports will be added to the system to establish a complete incident chain, from the initial reporting to analysis and resolution." Since all data is geocoded, crimes can be related to other spatially referenced information such as traffic, public transport, historical criminal occurrences, and local sociodemographic data. In the future, more functionality will be added and it is planned to merge GLADIS with the police department's corporate database. "In general, GLADIS has helped us develop a more knowledgeable and expedient police force to accurately target high-crime areas and implement effective crime prevention programs. Because GIS allows us to recognize a concentration of criminal activity more quickly, we are also able to reallocate our police officers to specific areas much faster to counter those crime hot spots," concludes Okon. For more information, contact G�nter Okon at Gunter.Okon@baypol.bayern.de. |
