Ubiquitous intelligence for smart cities: a public safety approach

Citizen-centered safety enhancement is an integral component of public safety and a top priority for decision makers in a smart city development. However, public safety agencies are constantly faced with the challenge of deterring crime. While most smart city initiatives have placed emphasis on the use of modern technology for fighting crime, this may not be sufficient to achieve a sustainable safe and smart city in a resource constrained environment, such as in Africa. In particular, crime series which is a set of crimes considered to have been committed by the same offender is currently less explored in developing nations and has great potential in helping to fight against crime and promoting safety in smart cities. This research focuses on detecting the situation of crime through data mining approaches that can be used to promote citizens' safety, and assist security agencies in knowledge-driven decision support, such as crime series identification. While much research has been conducted on crime hotspots, not enough has been done in the area of identifying crime series. This thesis presents a novel crime clustering model, CriClust, for crime series pattern (CSP) detection and mapping to derive useful knowledge from a crime dataset, drawing on sound scientific and mathematical principles, as well as assumptions from theories of environmental criminology. The analysis is augmented using a dual-threshold model, and pattern prevalence information is encoded in similarity graphs. Clusters are identified by finding highly-connected subgraphs using adaptive graph size and Monte-Carlo heuristics in the Karger-Stein mincut algorithm. We introduce two new interest measures: (i) Proportion Difference Evaluation (PDE), which reveals the propagation effect of a series and dominant series; and (ii) Pattern Space Enumeration (PSE), which reveals underlying strong correlations and defining features for a series. Our findings on experimental quasi-real data set, generated based on expert knowledge recommendation, reveal that identifying CSP and statistically interpretable patterns could contribute significantly to strengthening public safety service delivery in a smart city development. Evaluation was conducted to investigate: (i) the reliability of the model in identifying all inherent series in a crime dataset; (ii) the scalability of the model with varying crime records volume; and (iii) unique features of the model compared to competing baseline algorithms and related research. It was found that Monte Carlo technique and adaptive graph size mechanism for crime similarity clustering yield substantial improvement. The study also found that proportion estimation (PDE) and PSE of series clusters can provide valuable insight into crime deterrence strategies. Furthermore, visual enhancement of clusters using graphical approaches to organising information and presenting a unified viable view promotes a prompt identification of important areas demanding attention. Our model particularly attempts to preserve desirable and robust statistical properties. This research presents considerable empirical evidence that the proposed crime cluster (CriClust) model is promising and can assist in deriving useful crime pattern knowledge, contributing knowledge services for public safety authorities and intelligence gathering organisations in developing nations, thereby promoting a sustainable "safe and smart" city

Male victims of non-sexual and non-domestic violence: service needs and experiences in court

This report presents the findings of a study that explored the experiences and support needs of male victims of violence living in New South Wales. Abstract: While a great deal of research has been undertaken into female victims of violence, male-focused victimology research undertaken in Australia and internationally is scant. This means it is currently unclear what the support needs of male victims are and if these support needs are being met by the currently available services and programs. The findings of this report derive from a study commissioned by the NSW Department of Attorney General and Justice Victims Services that sought to address this knowledge gap by exploring the experiences and support needs of male victims of violence (excluding sexual assault and domestic violence) living in New South Wales. The study involved a comprehensive review of the currently available literature and interviews and focus groups with criminal justice and support service representatives who have contact with male victims of violence as part of their everyday work

Examination of Firearms and Forensics in Europe and aCross Territories: Final Report

The purpose of this project was to assess the nature and prevalence of GEC across Europe, and to examine the potential for reduction through policing, legislation, and the use of ballistic information sharing. More specifically, the questions addressed by this project are: 1) What is the nature, prevalence and impact of gun crime in Europe? 2) What are the challenges of implementing policies to prevent and mitigate the impact of gun crime? 3) What are the emerging threats to current and future gun crime policy? 4) How can gun crime be effectively policed, and what are the challenges for police organisations? 5) How is ballistics intelligence currently used in Baltic and EU countries? 6) Does ballistic intelligence provide evidence, beyond that provided by the INTERPOL Ballistic Information Network (IBIN) that crime guns do travel across EU borders? 7) Can ballistic intelligence facilitate cross-border co-operation and communication about GEC and lead to greater crime linkage detection and solution

Enhancing the work of the Islington Integrated Gangs Team: A pilot study on the response to serious youth violence in Islington

This report is the result of research conducted by the Centre for City Criminology at City, University of London, in partnership with Islington’s Integrated Gangs Team (IGT) and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The research was co-funded by MPS and the School of Arts and Social Sciences, City, University of London. Following a collaborative research event in October 2017, City Criminologists were commissioned to carry out a small-scale research project to capture the work of the IGT and to make recommendations regarding its operations, coherence, effectiveness and sustainability. The research team conducted semi-structured interviews over several months with 23 practitioners across the services that constitute the IGT. This report presents the findings and recommendations

Generating and using community intelligence: the case of neighbourhood policing.

This paper examines the role that community-generated information plays in neighbourhood policing, a key component of the UK police reform agenda. The neighbourhood policing agenda is concerned with the delivery of a consistent presence of dedicated neighbourhood teams which should be visible and accessible to the community. However, it also calls for the generation of community intelligence which should be used for local problem-solving and should be incorporated into National Intelligence Model (NIM) tasking. At the time of writing, the principle of incorporating information generated from the public into policing intelligence and priority setting thus has strong resonance, at least at the level of rhetoric of policy and practice. It is contended that difficult questions are posed in thinking through what it means to consult with the public, the nature of community-generated information and how it is translated into operational decisions and resource deployment. This paper explores the conceptual foundations of neighbourhood policing which are found in reassurance policing, problem-oriented policing and the National Intelligence Model. It then examines the current mechanisms for generating community information, prioritising problems, and delivering responses as they are applied in neighbourhood policing. It finishes with a critical discussion of the concept and practice of generating and using community information for setting local policing priorities

Digitizing surveillance: Categorization, space, inequality

In this article, we seek to add to current debates about surveillance and society by critically exploring the social implications of a new and emerging raft of surveillance practices: those that specifically surround digital techniques and technologies. The article has four parts. In the first, we outline the nature of digital surveillance and consider how it differs from other forms of surveillance. The second part of the article explores the interconnections between digital techniques and the changing political economies of cities and urban societies. Here we explore the essential ambivalence of digital surveillance within the context of wider trends towards privatization, liberalization and social polarization. The third part provides some insights into particular aspects of digital surveillance through three examples: algorithmic video surveillance (in which closed circuit television systems are linked to software for the recognition of movement or identity); the increasingly prevalent practices of digital prioritization in transport and communications; and the medical surveillance of populations, wherein databases are created for increasingly mixed state and commercial medical purposes. Following this, in part four, we reflect on the policy and research implications raised by the spread of digital surveillance

Olympic rings of steel: Constructing security for 2012 and beyond

Academic and political commentators have commonly sought to understand the Olympics as a cultural dynamic, a "spectacle" that motivates certain actors to project their relative interests in localized spaces and as well on a global scale (Hiller 2006; Boyle and Haggerty 2009b ). Mega-events, as this argument goes, are monumental cultural events (Roche 2000) that rely on the audacity of spectacle to dramatize and condition the cultural, political, legal and economic landscape. Extending these insights into surveillance studies, Boyle and Haggerty (2009b: 259-260) position spectacle and the disciplinary mechanisms of anxieties associated with mega-events to explain the risk management practices of security planners. The dynamic social implications of the spectacle condition dramatic regimes of securitization and surveillance such that sovereign power emanates from the production and consumption of spectacle. In similar fashion Vida Bajc (2007: 1648) writes that security meta-rituals "demonstrate[s] that the process of transformation of [the] public space [of mega-events] from one of routine of daily life into a sterile area [that] has a ritual form [that] .... separates insiders from outsiders and brings about a new socio-political reality." Put another way, the "security-meta ritual" legitimates security and surveillance practices by normalizing the social hierarchies it imposes. Bajc focuses on the over-determination of dividing practices in mega-event security, but the signifying practices associated with capital are absent (perhaps due to her empirical focus on presidential addresses). Klauser (2008: 181) links commercialization and mechanisms of surveillance, but only by foregrounding the significance of "neutralized space" created by granting absolute commercial rights to event sponsors. Neoliberalprivatization and its articulation with security and surveillance, however, cannot be reduced to control over sponsorship rights and consumptive practices in particular urban "zones," nor can it be limited by the methodological temporality of the event itself

Associative search through formal concept analysis in criminal intelligence analysis

Criminal Intelligence Analysis often requires a search different from the semantic and keyword based searching to reveal the associations among semantically and operationally connected objects within a crime knowledge base. In this paper we introduce associative search as a search along the networks of association between objects like people, places, other organizations, products, events, services, and so on. We also propose an associative search model based on the 5WH associated concepts of a crime, i.e. WHAT (what has happened), WHO (who was involved in the crime), WHEN (the temporal information of the crime), WHERE (the geo-spatial information of the crime) HOW (the modus-operandi used in committing a crime). We have employed Formal Concept Analysis theory to reveal the associations, highlighting Hot Spots, offender‘s profile and its associated offenders in a criminal activit

A Case-Based Reasoning Method for Locating Evidence During Digital Forensic Device Triage

The role of triage in digital forensics is disputed, with some practitioners questioning its reliability for identifying evidential data. Although successfully implemented in the field of medicine, triage has not established itself to the same degree in digital forensics. This article presents a novel approach to triage for digital forensics. Case-Based Reasoning Forensic Triager (CBR-FT) is a method for collecting and reusing past digital forensic investigation information in order to highlight likely evidential areas on a suspect operating system, thereby helping an investigator to decide where to search for evidence. The CBR-FT framework is discussed and the results of twenty test triage examinations are presented. CBR-FT has been shown to be a more effective method of triage when compared to a practitioner using a leading commercial application