Fighting Crime Through Systems Engineering

Jamie Conklin and his colleagues in the Department of Systems and Information Engineering have developed a novel tool for crime prevention.

Conklin is a research scientist in systems and information engineering, and program director of the department’s newly charted, Predictive Technology Laboratory.  One of the lab’s projects, initiated by Don Brown, chair and professor of systems and information engineering, is the Web-based Crime Analysis Toolkit (WebCAT).

The purpose of WebCAT is to help analyze crime statistics and provide a way for law enforcement agencies to share data.  Each jurisdiction in Virginia reports crime data to the state police on a monthly basis.  This information is aggregated and reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  This one-way flow of information doesn’t allow local law enforcement agencies to share data or conduct regional data analysis.

Tracking crime, especially across county lines, can be difficult.  Agencies can purchase their own crime analysis software, but it is typically expensive and difficult to use.  In addition, such software doesn’t allow for data sharing, which is particularly useful if crime is occurring on the edge of a jurisdiction, according to Conklin.

U.Va. researchers wanted to produce a product that not only addressed the data analysis and sharing issues but also was user-friendly.  WebCAT, with its web-based format, is just that.  “I expect that I could give this to any web-savvy person and they could figure it out in about thirty minutes,” comments Conklin. 

Users log in to WebCAT and are able to run queries that include crime characteristics such as location or use of a weapon.  The system then generates graphs, reports, and maps of crime data based on the queries.  WebCAT can detect trends such as when and where particular crimes are more likely to occur.  Conklin notes that law enforcement could use this information to more effectively deploy their resources—a notion that may be very appealing to cash-strapped departments. 

The WebCAT project is funded through the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and is part of the systems and information engineering department’s capstone program, which gives 4th year students the opportunity to practically apply their knowledge to solve real-world problems.  Each year since 2001, students and faculty have further developed and refined WebCAT’s abilities and level of sophistication.  With research funding, the assistance of student engineers, and a goal of simplicity in design, the costs of the project have been manageable and the subsequent product will be relatively inexpensive.

DataPro Systems recently licensed the software, making it available to all Virginia law enforcement agencies.  “There’s a lot of interest—agencies are very excited to get it,” says Conklin.  Still, he has plans to improve WebCAT and has been meeting with local law enforcement agencies to assess their additional needs.

WebCAT was initially designed for crime analysts, but police officers have expressed interest in using it too.  “A police officer can go in and look at his beat,” says Conklin. “This opens up doors and gets information to the people who are out there fighting crime everyday.”