MAPPING: TYING DATA TO THE REAL WORLD

David Lewis Manager Marketing and Product Development Peripheral Systems Pty Ltd New South Wales

NEARLY EVERYONE HAS, AT SOME TIME IN THEIR LIFE, NEEDED THE SERVICES of a police officer. When commencing the studies needed to produce this paper and to show the relevance of the Geographic Information System (GIS) to policing, it was necessary to establish what the bounds or purposes were for the maintenance of police forces. This paper will discuss the ways in which GIS may assist in the execution of policing duties.
The easily identifiable roles of policing are those of protecting life, preventing crime, enforcing the law of the land, keeping peace and harmony in society, safeguarding property, control of (and in a democratic society such as Australia, the maintenance of) freedom of movement of people from one place to another. The ways in which these objectives might be accomplished are somewhat more complex to identify. For example, to allow the roles of policing to be achieved, police forces must increase the feeling of community well-being and security, be more responsive to the needs of the community, encourage and assist citizens to share some of the workload in policing by way of Neighbourhood Watch programs and, in this age of financial restraint, be economical. The police force of any state or nation requires instant access to data collected by various government and private agencies for the purpose of assisting the community, under the guidelines highlighted above. The data that is collected nearly always involves the entering or referencing of a geographic identity. Therefore, it is important that police have computer technology which has the ability to quickly analyse great volumes of data and visually display that data in a geographically meaningful way. MapInfo is the GIS system used as a model in this paper and it is distributed by MAPINFO AustraliaPeripheral Systems Pty Ltd. MapInfo was initially designed for the personal computer and now includes the

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following platforms: Windows, Apple Macintosh and Unix for both Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. GIS and Spatial Analysis. The term spatial refers to the identification of the space surrounds of a particular entity, and maps are very effective drawings of the spatial relationships of physical objects, one to another. The collected data referred to in this paper contains a geographic identity, and in most databases there is usually a field or series of fields into which data related to addresses is loaded. It is this series of fields that this paper will elaborate on. Geographical data most often consists of three fields: a single entry for street number, name and type, another for suburb, and another for postcode. Each of these items becomes a geographic entity in relation to the other; that is, the street details can exist within the boundaries of either the suburb field or the postcode field. However it is possible to ask for street details and not stipulate any qualifier. The computer will then do a simple database search and display all requested street details encompassed by many suburbs and postcodes. For example, assuming the street detail given to the computer is 256 Pacific Highway, the Pacific Highway in Sydney travels through many suburbs, and in each suburb the numbering of that roadway begins again, therefore it is possible to have several listings for 256 Pacific Highway. This need not be the only way that a geographic entity may exist. If police units have established boundaries relevant to their investigations, then the street details may then be qualified by a special boundary segment, thus making it unique to all other street details. The way in which MapInfo works with street details is to assign the location to equidistant points between segments known to contain the appropriate range of street number addresses within a defined boundary, whatever that polygon represents. The key forces in GIS today are those that argue the earth science role of GIS software for the development of answers to the global questions of human survival on planet Earth. But just as the global situation can be assessed and a course of action recommended, so too can a police patrol, district or region be shown and activity of varying types overlaid on a specific geographic. The premise that the presence of more data will lead to better analysis and, therefore, a better understanding of a situation is dangerous because of the lack of 'increased-load' handling methods. Police officers are, like all people, capable of data overload1. The level of understanding may vary and, consequently, the level of perceived information by any police officer will vary. The time lag between collection of data and reaction to the information derived from that data is a concern. Examples include the Three Mile Accident in the USA, or Chernobyl in the former USSRboth situations were

The term data overload is used because, until that data is processed and is understood by the recipient, it is not information.

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severely hampered by a lack of clear information. In situations such as these, geographic information systems are crucial. GIS and Layers of Data Layering of data can be thought of as the use of plastic overlays on a traditional street map. An overlay may graphically denote a boundary of either police investigation or patrol, the size of the boundary being determined by current needs. Another plastic overlay may graphically denote a particular street path to be followed, while yet another overlay may be added which indicates points of relevant data. When these overlays or layers are shown together, they present a picture which is more easily understood than the same data presented in text form. It is little wonder that the saying a picture paints a thousand words has such support in these circumstances. The application of layering to a normal policing environment involves adapting stored data that is already available. An example in the case of investigation of robberies, would be the use of a detailed map that has symbols to indicate the properties that have been robbed. These symbols could be coloured in different shades, highlighting the type of robbery that took place. Immediately a pattern can be seen, whether the properties were usually residential or commercial premises, or whether a certain type of robbery method was used. An advantage of a GIS is that complex and unusual layers of data can easily be overlayed on the details already displayed. For example, a list of known persons whose method of operation matches that under investigation and their last known places of abode can be displayed. Again the symbol and the colour could be different. The known methods of operation could even be mixed to give a possible connection between previously unrelated matters. The basal geographic data that is capable of being displayed can vary according to need and layers of data related to streets, suburbs, towns, railway lines, stations, parks, forests, fire trails, rivers, lakes and even private access roads can be described. Over this data, boundaries peculiar to police needs can be superimposed to show regions, districts, patrols, sectors and beats in the normal organisational running of a police force. Other layers could include Neighbourhood Watch programs and Safety House zones. These can then be easily seen to fall within particular police control areas and officers then can be more rapidly assigned or organised to work within those locations. The work of search and rescue or siege situations can be more comprehensively controlled with the use of a GIS. A comprehensive map can be made available to the control team which shows not only the roadways and other standard GIS data, but also utility companies already using GIS can make their data available; for example, water mains, stormwater drains, mines and subsidence areas, mine shafts, canals, access points and directions of flow of these structures. Once all these data are layered onto the patrol or beat map familiar to the police officer, a new perspective may suddenly appear; for example, the

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likelihood of either a search being fruitful in a given area, or the possibility of capturing an escapee. Other Uses of a GIS Together with the more glamorous uses of a GIS, products such as MapInfo can be used in day-to-day police operations for organisational aspects such as identifying locations of police officers on the move. An officer can radio their position to a central control area which can then update the computer map with that location. Should there be a need for an urgent response, all units locations are known and the most appropriate unit can be despatched to the call. GIS can also be of assistance in monitoring patrols; for example, if, for some reason, a unit does not report at an appropriate time, a nearby unit can be diverted to investigate. The GIS method is more efficient than a manual system because a trace can then be created (if the system is established this way) to more accurately model the actions that took place leading to an arrest or the prevention of crime (this is known as modelling). Modelling using a computer system to map out the action that took place is already in use in Victoria where a CAD (computer-aided drawing) package is used to record a case and graphically represent a chart of how a crime was committed. A CAD package such as AutoCAD provides drawings that can be loaded into a GIS such as MapInfo, thereby giving the best of two worlds. The use of CAD in the courtroom is estimated to save the Victorian police $30,000 a day. MapInfo also has the facility to perform mobile tracking of objects or individuals through satellite transmission. A history of movement could be constructed to substantiate claims made by police in their surveillance of suspects. Already there is a company whose vehicles are equipped with this technology thus enabling them to monitor and ensure the safety of the companys product. The advantages that mobile tracking could provide to policing strategies include those responsible for traffic management being able to decide on least-cost traffic routing, time to next destination (very important in emergency situations), and vehicle positioning both for the safety of officers and the community. Even the satellite duress alarm identification may be useful. MapInfo can concurrently track many individual units and show the location of an object to within fifty metres on the mapfile datasets provided. This type of central control would be paramount in an organisation the size of most police forces. Another activity that a GIS can perform specific to policing needs is the ability to display police data on a map screen and perform what-ifs with that data. This is much like using a spreadsheet, and investigations to project the possibility of certain events occurring can be carried out. Similar geographic investigation can be done for disaster relief work. Through mathematically projecting the rise of water using a GIS, what-ifs can be performed to determine which streets and houses will be first affected by rising flood waters. Occupants of homes near a river or storm-water drain will obviously

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be evacuated first, should the need arise. The functionality of the GIS is that software can do projections for situations that have yet not been experienced by people; for example, predictions for a once-in-one-hundred-years flood can be made without having to rely on guesswork and memory. Conclusion There are many uses for a system that is designed to relate spatial data visually, and the GIS can be effectively used by a wide variety of people. But perhaps, as mentioned earlier, to be able to manage a force of people whose occupation requires them to be out in the community they serve, there is not any greater need than to see.

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