GIS software company Caliper has released new highway exit data for the United States and Canada.
Users of Maptitude 2018 with the Canada or United States country packages can download a free point layer containing all signed and numbered highway exits within their respective country.
The highway exits layer allows users to find the nearest highway interchange to a particular location or determine proximity to a desired interchange. Applications include site location assessment, commercial real estate, franchise development and accessibility studies.
The data can also be used in conjunction with the free U.S. traffic count data to determine traffic volumes around a chosen exit.
The Highway Exits and Interchanges layer can be added to any Maptitude 2018 map.
Location content provider Nearmap has partnered with the City of Durham, North Carolina, Public Works Department to upgrade its imagery on numerous projects.
Using real-time imagery from Nearmap in the field, the department streamlines data collection and saves time and money.
The department manages all infrastructure data for the city, including mapping the impervious area (structures that resist water infiltration) for the city’s $16 million a year Stormwater Utility Fee fund. “That is half a billion square feet of impervious area that we manage through digitization and review daily,” said Edward Cherry, city GIS administrator.
After using several satellite imagery systems with low resolution and infrequent captures, Cherry and his 14-member GIS staff determined the city needed far superior quality in their mapping imagery to accommodate the city’s explosive growth.
Captured every six months at a 2.8-inch ground sample distance, Nearmap now supplies Durham with up-to-date images accessible through web-based cloud servers.
With Nearmap, the Durham Public Works Department has achieved better monitoring of pavement conditions; time savings and documentation of road repairs; more detailed maps of city riparian zones; and accurate and detailed customer billing.
“With Nearmap, we’ve been able to update development processes and policies to support the revitalization of the downtown district as well as rapid city growth,” Cherry said.
Esri cosponsored HACKtheMACHINE, the United States Navy’s Digital Experience presented by the Naval Sea Systems Command, which took place Sept. 21–23 in Seattle.
The Naval Sea Systems Command hosted the event to drive the development of innovative digital capabilities that will help the navy protect the sea, air, space and subsurface domains in the 21st century.
The Seattle event connected developers to the needs of our nation’s navy and provided developers with access to Esri APIs and software developer kits. This will allow developers to bring context to maritime security situations through access to location data and spatial analytics tools.
Computers, data and digital communications underpin the global economy and delivery of the world’s life-sustaining services like food, power and clean water.
“HACKtheMACHINE is looking to reach out to a new generation and engage them in meaningful conversations about maritime security,” said Zac Staples, Fathom5 CEO, who founded the event while serving as the director of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Cyber Warfare. “It is designed to create opportunities to innovate, solve problems, and change the world for the better.”
“Esri is honored to be chosen as one of the sponsors for this event,” said Curt Hammill, navy account executive at Esri. “Our location intelligence solutions are used by all American military branches, and sponsoring HACKtheMACHINE gives us the opportunity to continue our proven history of supporting our armed services in their most critical missions.”
HACKtheMACHINE is composed of three tracks, and Esri participated in two of them. Track 2: Data Science & the Seven Seas, used data from ships under way on the high seas to develop algorithms to assist the navy with preventing collisions of human-operated and autonomous vessels.
Esri is also a solution provider for Track 3: Hack for the Oceans, in which teams put themselves in the position of the first responders after Hurricane Katrina. Each team will deploy applications to a similar environment to the navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networking and Enterprise Services (CANES) Agile Core Services system, emulating what value a first responder DevOps team could add in such a scenario.
Creative developers also had a chance to win an annual ArcGIS Developer Subscription for innovative use of the ArcGIS platform. Other prizes were awarded from other cosponsors.
HACKtheMACHINE was organized by Fathom5 and Booz Allen Hamilton, on behalf of the United States Navy.
Europe-based Airbus Defence and Space has entered into a partnership with Orbital Insight, a U.S.-based geospatial analytics company, to build a suite of geospatial analytics services and tools.
The agreement will provide Orbital Insight with access to Pleiades and SPOT satellite imagery at scale, and provide Airbus with analytics services, making Orbital Insight the first analytics partner for the Airbus Digital Platform OneAtlas.
The OneAtlas Platform is a collaborative environment enabling users to easily access constantly updated satellite imagery, perform large-scale image processing, extract industry-specific insights, and benefit from Airbus assets to develop tailored solutions for a wide range of markets in both commercial and government sectors, the company said.
“Under this agreement, we will offer premium analytics capabilities to a large range of users, powered by Orbital Insight’s services and tools,” said François Lombard, director of the Intelligence Business at Airbus Defence and Space. “The OneAtlas Platform is definitively the cornerstone to leverage both Airbus and partner assets to support our customers’ business development and growth.”
“We’re proud to be Airbus’ first geospatial analytics partner on the OneAtlas Platform,” said James Crawford, Orbital Insight’s CEO and founder. “Along with our new satellite imagery agreement, this partnership drives customer value for those looking to better understand what’s happening on and to Earth.”
GIS specialists are much more than mapmakers. Make sure your organization and customers understand how spatial analytics can help them succeed.
By Adam Carnow
Most non-GIS users hear the term “G-I-S” and think “M-A-P.” That is, they think of GIS, and GIS practitioners, as mapmakers. Most GIS practitioners have unknowingly perpetuated this image. Ask any GIS practitioner what they do for a living and most will say, “I make maps;” however, the reality is that what they do for a living is help people make better decisions through the power of location. This is what I call location intelligence.
There is a tremendous growth opportunity for GIS in government across the enterprise. GIS was created to perform spatial analysis. GIS can often be underutilized because non-GIS users sometimes don’t understand the reach of spatial analysis and how it can help them. GIS practitioners need to market and evangelize the power of spatial analysis to help change that image.
Photo: rmnoa357/Shutterstock.com
You can break down location intelligence into six categories. As you move down this list, the value of the location intelligence increases:
Understanding Where. A map (could be paper or PDF, but should be an interactive web map) showing where the fire stations are located across a city.
Measuring Size, Shape and Distribution. A map showing the size, shape and distribution of wetlands across an area would help with wetland protection and preservation.
Determining How Places Are Related. Showing how certain soil types correspond to flood zones.
Finding the Best Locations and Paths
To find the best location for a new fire station, run a drive-time polygon process to show the coverage area for each fire station. The areas that are uncovered are where a new fire station is needed.
To find the best path for field inspectors: We have 50 inspections to do today and three inspectors. Divide the inspection locations among each inspector and create the most efficient route to get their work done.
Detecting and Quantifying Patterns. Crime analysts look at crime data to try to predict where the next one may occur and to help identify known perpetrators. (See also An inside look at fighting crime with GIS.)
Making Predictions. Modeling a watershed can allow for flood predictions based on anticipated rainfall.
Another way to help break the mapmaker image is to rebrand. Most staff in any organization use spreadsheets daily for a multitude of things that bring value to the organization – some say it’s the number one business intelligence (BI) tool.
There are GIS software tools that are as easy to use as a spreadsheet; in fact, you can use GIS inside of spreadsheets.
Wetlands map, Oregon’s Klamath Lake. (Map: USGS)
Even though spreadsheets are such a useful tool, you don’t see a Spreadsheet Department. Spreadsheet is just the name of the tool, so you don’t have, or name, a department for it. A department should be named based on the function, or value, it serves.
GIS should be thought of as BI with location data and spatial analysis, or location intelligence. A great way to get people to understand the real value and power of GIS is to rebrand your GIS department to something like Enterprise Location Intelligence.
One such example of this is Walgreens. As the drugstore chain’s GIS department became more strategic and tied to the analytics of the organization, the company rebranded it as Enterprise Location Intelligence.
If your organization has a BI group, they should consider reorganizing to put GIS with that BI group. I’m seeing real-world examples of this rebrand:
GIS job title changes to things like:
Data Analytics Manager
Content Delivery Manager
Business and Location Intelligence Manager
Reorganization putting GIS with BI: A major city has a Smart City initiative, and in response the city has reorganized its IT group — they now have a Data Analytics Group that consists of a BI team and their GIS team.
This rebrand, and expansion of the understanding of the true purpose and value of GIS, will not just help the organization realize more return on investment (ROI) for their GIS investment, it will help the GIS practitioners elevate their value to the organization and hence their careers.
What can you do? If you’re a GIS practitioner:
Explore rebranding your title and your GIS group as a start to changing your image from mapmaker to solution provider.
Evangelize the power of location intelligence. This is actually pretty easy to do. When someone asks for a map, ask them why they need it, probe to find out more about their project; you will probably uncover a need for spatial analysis.
Start to enable others in your organization to become GIS users via easy-to-use web maps and apps. As they use GIS, they will realize its full potential and seek to utilize it more often.
If you’re not a GIS practitioner, seek out your GIS team to learn more about their capabilities and how they can help you. And, become a GIS user, there are plenty of GIS tools available that are easy to learn and use.
This article originally appeared on Govloop.com and is reprinted with permission.
Adam Carnow is an Esri community evangelist and part of the GovLoop Featured Contributor program.
Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm, has been selected as a consultant to Civis Analytics to perform comprehensive data analytics, including flood hazard and property loss modeling and damage estimation, to support the city of Houston’s post-Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts.
Hurricane Harvey flooding in Houston. (Photo: FEMA)
The granular, structure-level understanding of this catastrophic flooding event will be critically important to the city’s efforts to catalog impacts and direct resources to the rebuilding and recovery efforts, Dewberry said.
The resulting data will be made accessible to authenticated city staff and non-profit organizations through the new Houston Estimation and Analysis of Loss (HEAL) platform. A cloud-based system that will be used in disaster mitigation planning, HEAL will aggregate data, analytics, tools and visualizations in a web-based environment available to city, state and federal officials and other stakeholders.
Hurricane Harvey flooding in Houston. (Photo: FEMA)
The data development effort featured a hindcast model of the historic Hurricane Harvey storm event, which dropped 51 inches of rainfall within the city of Houston and surrounding areas over five days in August.
The HEAL platform will provide the city with a comprehensive data collection and analytical architecture with the ability to calculate and report unmet needs at various levels, such as structure, parcel and census block.
The analytics will include extensive modeling to estimate flood depth and extent and the structural and contents losses created by it. Model validation will use a wide set of data from debris removal pickup locations, and community field data collection, to federal assistance information, as well as non-traditional sources such as social media videos.
Hurricane Harvey flooding in Houston. (Photo: FEMA)
For this complex project, Dewberry’s innovative approach has involved strong applications of science and engineering including meteorological data processing, 2D flood risk modeling, and damage assessment to replicate post-Harvey conditions in Houston.
Nearmap aerial imagery in ArcMap. (Screenshot: Nearmap)
The Shelby County, Tennessee, Emergency Communications District has implemented Nearmap high-resolution aerial imagery to geocode and plot new addresses and developments into its 911 mapping systems.
The mapping systems help fire and rescue, emergency medical services and law enforcement get instant access to updated maps needed to get to the right locations as soon as possible.
The Emergency Communications District is responsible for establishing local emergency telephone service, providing the network call-handling equipment, and updating the geographic information systems (GIS) data for each Public Safety Answering Point within Shelby County.
Nearmap provides frequently updated, high-quality aerial captures to ensure that the district’s GIS data, geocoding and the 911 mapping systems are up to date, providing public safety and law enforcement the most accurate information, the company said.
Benefits of Nearmap aerial imagery for the Emergency Communications District include:
The imagery is delivered through the cloud as a subscription service, making it accessible to all team members via mobile and desktop.
Nearmap imagery is taken at least twice a year, both leaf-on and leaf-off to provide different views of locations in different seasons.
Aerial captures integrate directly into Esri ArcMap, ArcPro and ArcGIS Online applications, so GIS information can overlay directly onto the high-resolution imagery.
Before Nearmap, Shelby County’s aerial image process required a contracted flight to photograph the county areas. Because of the high cost of capturing those images, the county purchased images once every two years, after pooling resources from various county entities.
“With our old aerial imagery provider, there were issues with mosaicking separate images together, and since the imagery was taken every two years, many rural and unincorporated areas were out of date,” said Timothy Zimmer, GIS administrator for Shelby County’s Emergency Communications District.
With out of date images, the county had to develop alternate methods to locate addresses for the 911 systems. Now, the combined impact of data services, base maps, Nearmap imagery and third-party data are improving all aspects of public safety, including law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services, Nearmap said. Even other agencies are using the district’s imagery and GIS data.
“There’s a certain context and currency you can get from Nearmap imagery that you simply can’t get from any other imagery products,” Zimmer said. “Other agencies, such as the County Clerk and the Utility Company, are using our addressing data because Nearmap has helped enable us to be much more current.”
GIS is growing in importance to urban development, whether for environmental impact studies, geofencing or building information modeling (BIM). Sharing GIS data with developers is critical to a coordinated approach to smart city growth.
By Christine Easterfield, Principal Analyst, Cambashi
Just over half the world’s 7 billion population lives in cities. In Europe, this rises to three quarters, and 30 cities worldwide have populations of more than 10 million — the majority in India, China and South America.
This trend will continue. It is projected that the global population will reach almost 10 billion by 2050, which means cities will need to cope with increasing demands on housing, transport and communications.
Growing urban populations place considerable stress on housing stock. Cities need to provide scope to build new, but also to look at best use of existing properties.
In the growing urban population, there will always be a proportion that needs more support as employment rates shift and wages do not always keep up with city expenses. Social housing projects need to keep pace, and making the most of city resources opens opportunities for smart buildings.
The role of GIS
Proposed Indianapolis zoning map. (Image: City of Indianapolis)
Coordinating new build and refurbishment plans across a city requires planning and organization, and a set of tools to support planners and designers. The layout of city-planning zones is the starting point for many new developments — sharing data about these areas is typically achieved using a GIS (geographic information system).
The standard city map with records of roads, emergency routes, bike routes, key buildings, new development zones, existing housing stock, utility services and street lighting are a central resource for most cities.
Sharing data between these city maps and developers’ plans is critical to a coordinated approach to city growth.
Environmental impact
The early stages for many developments involve an environmental impact study. How will the new development fit into the existing landscape? What restrictions are imposed because of the conditions of the site or the current demands on local resources? What options are there for addressing these constraints?
This last point is important for acceptance of the development. Being able to show a level of flexibility to accommodate local concerns and developers’ challenges will build a cooperative relationship. The ability to easily integrate building plans with the city map means that confidence is quickly built into the new plans.
Combining the geography of the city view with the building model destined for development provides a perfect foundation for an integrated GIS/BIM model to take the development from drawing board to handover.
Maintaining a digital twin of a development, in the form of a BIM, provides a rich source of information about the as-built building — exact measurements, materials used, changes from the original design and more. Integrating this with the city maps held in GIS means a continuous dataset can be formed.
Tools for construction site inspection and reporting
Photo: Alen Ajan/Fotolia.com
Developing building information models (BIMs) requires monitoring the build activity and accurate recording of the construction. The best way to do this is as it happens.
Simple-to-use tools that are robust enough to cope with a construction site are becoming more available from software providers. These support gathering data by construction teams and contractors as the work is completed.
As well as recording data, these tools are also useful in registering the progress and completion of tasks. Many enable interaction with central systems that can send changes and updates directly to the site for immediate action.
The same tools can register the location of the user, enabling safer working practices to be enforced.
The practice of geofencing to monitor or even restrict access to parts of a construction site, by registering the location of a device against a predefined region on a map of the site, can track critical activities and react with the most appropriate action if an incident is reported.
Remote site inspection and reporting
The Aeryon SkyRanger. (Photo: Aeryon Labs)
The safest inspections don’t involve human intervention at all. Sending an unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV or drone, to fly over your site removes risk to staff when viewing hazardous environments.
Photographic imagery collected by drone can be loaded into GIS tools and accurately registered against the map of the area to provide a seamless view of the site.
Data integration is key
The range of data that can be accurately gathered and viewed together now covers original 3D designs, 2D construction plans, inspection photo-imagery and as-built updates.
Integration of BIM and GIS tools means that these different data types can be viewed together and in the same spatial context.
Support for building operation, management and maintenance in the wider context of a smart city
On-the-spot data capture of accurate as-built building information models that can seamlessly integrate with existing city plans leads to a data resource that cities can build on to improve safety, security and facilities for their citizens.
So what should the smart city planner be looking for?
Existing geospatial and data management tools already address many of these challenges, and when an opportunity for a technology refresh is presented, the approach to smart city support should be a big part of the mix.
Christine Easterfield
Christine Easterfield is principal analyst for Cambashi. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the software business. Her experience has covered geospatial asset management for the utility industry: assessing market needs and opportunities, managing customer requirements, liaising with development teams and running global product introduction programs.
Previous roles include programming, training, consultancy and product marketing management.
She has worked for a range of companies from multinationals to small start-ups, resulting in an understanding of how different sized organisations operate, grow and manage change. Christine has a BSc in Computational Sciences and an MA in English Literature.
Aerial imagery specialist Spookfish has expanded its capture program into New South Wales (NSW), now covering the NSW coast and Sydney’s entire metropolitan area. Spookfish’s coverage in NSW now spans from Newcastle to Kiama and from Lithgow to Manly.
The expansion into NSW marks the next stage of a nationwide rollout for Spookfish. In the past 12 months, the company has expanded coverage into the South Australian, Victorian, Australian Capital Territory and now NSW markets, in addition to its Western Australian coverage.
The expansion of coverage will give businesses and government agencies across Sydney and regional NSW the opportunity to access high-resolution aerial imagery and save thousands of dollars by reducing the time spent on site.
Spookfish now covers the entire Sydney metropolitan area, home to 71% of the NSW population. The city’s growth presents development opportunities for businesses, all of which need to fit within city planning regulations. High-resolution aerial imagery will play an important role in the planning stages.
Spookfish also captures regional cities and towns, including Albury and Wagga Wagga, at the same consistent specification as capital cities.
With the addition of Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide’s entire metropolitan areas, Spookfish offers users access to more than 55,000 square kilometers of high-resolution imagery across Australia. The platform provides customers a clear view on any device with no data caps to give users access to unlimited high-resolution aerial imagery without the risk of unexpected costs.
“Sydney has the greatest population density in Australia, and continues to grow with new projects commissioned to meet this growing population,” said Jason Waller, Spookfish CEO. “We are very pleased to be able to offer businesses access to high resolution imagery of this unique city, to help drive effective and precise planning of developments and urban areas.
“Every day our platform is being discovered by many Australian businesses, helping them save time and money by providing precise aerial imagery with the timeliness and convenience of cloud delivery. We offer our customers a service like no other, where they can access extremely high resolution images at an affordable price across very large areas, with no data caps.”
Spookfish utilizes a fleet of specialized planes to capture imagery for its platform. With regular updates in capital cities across Australia, customers have an up-to-date and evolving view of their world.
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from Maxar’s MDA RADARSAT-2 satellite will become available to SecureWatch subscribers on Oct. 1, according to DigitalGlobe.
SecureWatch, DigitalGlobe’s cloud-based geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) platform, will now combine the company’s high-resolution optical imagery and MDA’s SAR imagery in one platform, enabling defense and intelligence analysts to deliver actionable insights to decision makers regardless of weather and light conditions, the company said.
Maxar’s MDA will refresh hundreds of global sites on a weekly basis using RADARSAT-2’s Wide Ultra Fine format (3 meter resolution, 50 kilometer scene width).
RADARSAT-2 imagery allows users to observe features and changes that go undetected using other imaging techniques, and provides day and night coverage regardless of weather.
SecureWatch users can access timely RADARSAT-2 imagery using current subscription plans. When combined with 30 cm optical imagery, analysts will have an even more uniquely powerful and reliable toolset to perform analysis to make decisions with confidence, the company said.
“Adding RADARSAT-2 imagery to SecureWatch is a perfect demonstration of Maxar Technologies’ unique promise: create valuable, integrated and innovative solutions that address customers’ critical challenges,” said Mike Greenley, group president of MDA. “MDA’s RADARSAT-2 information has played a key role in supporting security missions for over two decades, and partnering with our sister company, DigitalGlobe, immediately enhances our offerings and expands our global reach.”
“SecureWatch subscribers now have an exciting new tool to enrich GEOINT gathering and decision-making,” said Dan Jablonsky, DigitalGlobe president. “Combining SAR and optical imagery takes analysts’ abilities to the next level to deliver powerful insights into what’s happening in their areas of interest and allows them to save lives, resources and time.”
June’s Geointelligence Insider article on Jack Maple was the human interest article. One of the readers of June’s article had the opportunity to meet Jack Maple. I appreciate the feedback. This month’s article is based upon the recommendation of Geospatial Solutions Managing Editor Tracy Cozzens to cover the technical side of GIS and crime fighting.
Recap
Fighting crime with GIS sounds simple enough — map where the crimes are happening and where the bad guys are and send in the cops. That would be a gross over simplification. As always, there’s more to the case.
The first CompStat was founded in the pre-internet days of 1994 on a Commodore 64, harkening back to the days of 128-MB floppy disks and MS-DOS, a Jurassic period of computer evolution that marked some of the first steps into crime fighting’s digital era. The graph above is the current CompStat 2.0 from the NYPD. It is a GIS-based system, interactive, user-friendly and available to the public. Take note of the highlighted number.
Since CompStat was introduced, crime has fallen precipitously. As of this writing (Aug. 25, 2018) New York City has 183 reported murders year to date. By comparison, in 1990, prior to CompStat, there were 217 murders per month on average. More murders were committed per month in 1990 in New York City than what it will experience in all of 2018. Murders have dropped nearly 90 percent. In other words, nine out of 10 who would otherwise have been killed are alive to return to their families, parents, classmates and colleagues, and friends. The difference is staggering, providing tangible proof geospatial science is a benefit to humanity.
The arsenal of geospatial applications available for the crime fighter is enough to make any superhero envious. The list of these high-tech, integrated intelligence systems push the limits of science fiction.
The underlying strength of these systems is the robust GIS/GPS platform they are built on. Security cameras are geospatially connected to the network with dynamic mapping capabilities. This allows the surveillance video to be overlaid on GIS software in order to interact with more information and create actionable intelligence.
Cameras use a host of software algorithms that are able to recognize aggressive behavior, patterns, anomalies, change detection, biometric features, objects and text. Systems can integrate real-time information like social media feeds as well as live video, including facial recognition software scans for wanted individuals in real time. This information is shared with police officers in the field.
Police cars are becoming mobile command centers outfitted with a suite of sensors, and will eventually include drones. Police officers wear smart glasses augmenting information about who they are looking at in an intelligence and location-based context.
The police officer’s belt is Bluetooth enabled, connecting all these devices, as well as monitoring the officer’s vital signs. The officer’s gun is also Bluetooth enabled, reporting when it is drawn, the direction it is pointed and if it fired. The gun also comes with a chip for tracking purposes and to ensure only the officer it belongs to can fire the weapon.
The vest-worn camera is woven into the seamless geospatial network of sensors and records the officer’s experience from a first-person perspective.
Imagine this scenario. A crowd gathers at an intersection triggering an anomaly detection sensor due to the number of people gathering in that location at that time. Out of the thousands of security cameras being monitored at the Command and Control Center (C3), this video scrolls around and flashes yellow, bringing attention to the possible situation. Other mounted cameras that have that intersection in the field of view automatically align along the edge of the main security video projecting their imagery onto a 3D data model of the area. Police officers in the field nearest to that location are simultaneously alerted. No action is taken at this point except the police begin heading in that direction. Facial recognition software scans the video images for faces of known suspects. Social media and texts scroll next to the video and geospatially link to those in each frame of the video. Colored sentiment indicators showed levels of concern. Boxes outlining people in various colors correspond to threat levels determined by datamining multiple databases. Semi-persistent motion trails lag behind each box showing the speed and direction of people in the video. Pattern identification looks for convergence, divergence and synchronous movements.
Video analytics identify several people converging on a car that just pulled up. The license plate reader linked to the security camera reports the car as stolen with two traffic violations. Based on this preliminary information, the situation is elevated. A police officer is dispatched but before arriving, a drone launches from the police car outfitted with a true color camera and a stereographic infrared camera. The stereographic imagery pair is streamed live to the police officers entering the area of interest through their smart glasses and to a team of imagery specialists at the C3. The video analytics of the police drone are seamlessly integrated with the security camera videos focusing on the car and the individuals as it arrives on scene and surveils the area. Object recognition identifies three possible weapons on the persons of interest. The boxes around those individuals turn red. They are tagged for persistent surveillance by all security cameras in the area. The order is given to apprehend them for probable cause. More police officers are called in and before they arrive they know who they are looking for, where the person is located, and that they may be armed and dangerous. In less than a minute, the police arrive. The suspects flee. The drone follows one of them up the street into an alley. Two of the officers pursue him. The other two suspects jump into the car and drive away. License plate readers and security cameras track the car on a map showing the vehicle’s route and speed with corresponding real-time video as the vehicle passes into view of each camera. As the vehicle travels south a police officer steps out from a cross street and shoots an electromagnetic dart into the speeding vehicle, disabling it. The police officers approaching the car shine a disorienting laser light weapon called a dazzler at the suspects, preventing their eyes from focusing. The occupants are apprehended without incident. They are searched for probable cause and arrested for carrying handguns without a permit.
The other suspect fled on foot. The drone followed him relaying live imagery to the police officers’ smart glasses. Their smart glasses showed a real-time map of their locations and the suspect’s. They cornered him in a fenced area. Guns drawn, the smoky red light of the laser cutting through the air pointed at the suspect. He surrendered. No gun was found on the suspect but the drone video the gun being thrown into a dumpster. One of the officers went back and retrieved the gun.
Gun traces were run on the three confiscated weapons and one was identified as stolen, matching a description of a gun used in a recent homicide. One of the suspect’s fingerprints match those found on shell casings at a nearby location reported by gunshot acoustic sensors. Based on this information, there is probable cause and a tap and trace is approved electronically by a special task force judge. The phone records of the three suspects are searched linking them to the el Diablo gang. Several unknown numbers are also in the call logs. Those numbers are added to the case file to be investigated later.
Only one of the suspects has a known address. The other two have no known location. Activity extracted from phone records show their whereabouts over the preceding days pin pointing their main locus of operation. Search warrants are issued. Within hours of arresting the suspects, the locations are raided and searched. Officers discover a cache of weapons, drugs, laptops and other useful information.
Everything described above is already available — it is only a matter of time and money. And, if Dubai is any indication of things to come, police could soon be arriving on hoverbikes.
The police arriving within minutes is key to the success of preventive policing. Time saves lives. The goal is to intervene before crime happens. But how is it possible? Before answering, let’s look at some numbers.
By the numbers
In 2017 almost 84 percent of the population of the United States was considered urban residing within 106,400 square miles. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports there are only 758,854 sworn officers in the United States. Maintaining the same 84 percent ratio as the population means only 634,847 officers cover those urban areas. Specifically, it breaks down to six police officers per square mile. It is one police officer for every 431 residents except that police, like all of us, work 40 hours a week, have days off, take vacations, etc., so, only one out of every six police officers is on duty at any given time. That is one police officer for every 2,153 residents; however, police often operate in pairs, so 4,306 residents depend upon two brave souls to protect them from danger.
Victims of violent crime are 2.1 percent of the population. In a sampling of 4,306 residents that equals 90 victims of violent crime every year. In the top 10 cities it is far worse. Police officers have an incredible responsibility placed on them and they rightly deserve our praise, support and respect for the dangers they face every day.
Why not more officers you ask? Police protection comes at a cost of $100 billion annually. Our relative safety is not cheap. Crime is a huge expense. Jails, trials, public defenders, prosecutors, judges and incarceration all cost money. Safety is expensive. Budgets are stretched thin. The answer for increased safety and security isn’t more police. The answer is integrated and intelligent technology systems leading to increased efficiency. Technology has benefitted most other professions. Now, the field of law enforcement and crime prevention are benefitting. Cost is the driving need. These efficiencies are being realized on a grand scale. Making matters more urgent is the worldwide mass migration as populations move towards cities. It is imperative to manage crime now rather than later.
Enter predictive policing — putting the power of open data, cloud computing, machine learning, geoscience and artificial intelligence in support of law enforcement and prevention. Basically, cities are broken up into grid patterns, typically 500×500 feet. Within each grid, crime data is compiled using multiple factors and resources, such as historical data, 9-1-1 calls, recent crime reports, and residences of known offenders and parolees. Even considerations such as the time, day of week, celebrations and cyclical events are taken into account. Information derived from security cameras, license plate readers, social media and financial transactions help the algorithm. The algorithms take into account information collected by authorized wire taps, call logs and other confidential sources. The goal of the algorithms are to include all available resources to develop the most complete and reliable dataset upon which the heatmaps base their probabilities. This helps police departments allocate their resources, know what to prepare for and, most importantly, know where to be to protect the public at large.
University of Montana, Research and Training Center (Data: U.S. Census Bureau)
Police tighten their patrols around the hotspots. Throughout their shifts those hotspots are subject to change depending upon new data. Mobile units simply focus their patrol efforts accordingly. Once a threat is reported, automated navigation routing systems show police the fastest route to the incident and their expected time of arrival. Officers continue to receive intelligence about the incident while en route to anticipate the situation prior to arriving. Knowing where the areas of highest probability are expected to occur focuses non-human assets too, such as geofencing the areas of interest and monitoring more closely for key indicators. This technology is not too different than numerical weather forecasting models predicting what and where weather events will occur in the next hour, three hours, six hours and so on. Numerical models continue to evolve making forecasting more and more reliable. And, although the past does not predict the future, it is a strong indicator. The disclaimer would be similar to the ones most have seen before, “Past performance does not guarantee future returns.” Sometimes preventing a crime is saving a life, sometimes it’s protecting property and almost always it is stopping someone from doing something they will later regret. All crime cannot be prevented but for every crime that is prevented there is a family spared from tragedy.
Preventive policing does more than help keep communities safer. It improves economic viability. Crime has an inverse relationship with a community’s vibrancy. As crime increases, prosperity decreases. Real estate values go down, the tax revenue goes down, employment opportunities go down, and safety, happiness and well-being go down. Crime is a societal disease. Reducing crime reverses those affects. Home values, employment, affluence and the quality of life all go up, which correlates to increased tax revenues. Thus, reduce crime and the city’s revenues increase. That means politicians can divert money into other programs to benefit the citizens. For these reasons there is bi-partisan support for computer based policing.
If you do the research you will see opposition efforts against artificially intelligent systems to fight crime, but those opponents are not well supported. Communities want to feel safer. Politicians want to be able to say they are using the latest technologies to keep the community safe. Companies want to prove their systems work in decreasing crime and capturing criminals. Crime prediction causes the greatest concern because it borders on Minority Report, but it is the echo of Jack Maple and William Bratton putting police where they need to be to support the people they need to protect. It is the essence of community based policing.
This article only touches on the front side of GIS and law enforcement, but there is another world on the back side piecing crime scenes together with forensics in artificially replicated environments. That too is a fascinating topic to explore.
Do yourself and your neighborhood a favor. Thank the police officers in your community for the job they do. They are foundational to the fabric of our society.
According to SimActive, users can now process raw data, produce point clouds and digital surface models, and perform volumetric calculations with the Correlator3D workflow. (Photo: SimActive)
SimActive has updated its Correlator3D end-to-end photogrammetry software to include tools for users to generate precise statistics on mining activities, with improved volumetric calculation.
The integrated tools allow users to generate precise statistics on mining activities.
The Correlator3D software performs aerial triangulation and produces dense digital surface models, digital terrain models, point clouds, orthomosaics and vectorized 3D features.
Applications like mineral extraction monitoring can be done seamlessly within the software.
Users can process raw drone data, produce point clouds and DSMs, and perform volumetric calculations in the same Correlator3D workflow.
“Our clients often require project delivery within 24 hours”, said Jennifer Waugh, principal at Alietum Ltd., a Canadian company using unmanned technology to support construction, consulting and government clients. “SimActive enables us to meet this demanding turnaround time.”
Based in Montreal, Quebec City, Canada, SimActive has been a developer of photogrammetry software since 2003.
