It’s pretty smart, the program, designed by George Mohler at Santa Clara University, uses locations of past crimes to flag potential future crime scenes. The logic: a burglary at one location tends to trigger other burglaries nearby in the next few days — like an aftershock effect. And the software is relatively effective too! New Scientist notes:
On average the program predicted the location and time of 25 per cent of actual burglaries that occurred on any particular day in an area of Los Angeles in 2004 and 2005, using just the data on burglaries that had occurred before that day
The program will flag up to 10 areas (150sqm) for three different crimes (residential burglary, auto burglary and auto theft) and then the police will adjust their patrolling schedules to check out those locations in an effort to curb criminal activity from happening. The thought is, if the police is around, criminals would be less likely to be, well, criminals. I wonder if this new software comes with cool gloves. [New Scientist]
Image: Anton Prado PHOTO/Shutterstock
Molokov
Monday, October 17, 2011 at 2:48 PMIt may not be Minority Report, but it’s a similar concept to the one used in the new show Person of Interest.
glennc
Monday, October 17, 2011 at 3:08 PMgreat show
Tro Lling
Monday, October 17, 2011 at 3:31 PMUsing Maths to predict (and solve) crimes?… Sounds like that god-aweful ‘Numbers’ show…
InTheMorning
Monday, October 17, 2011 at 4:19 PMWell it is far from a Philip K. Dick novel, but maybe one small step for man.
Luke
Monday, October 17, 2011 at 4:54 PMSo… its pretty much going to be as effective as throwing a dart at a map and waiting at the location it lands on for the crime to happen.