News story about some software I work on that visualizes crime statistics in heatmaps:
http://www.abc4.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?articleID=98676

My co-worker has some other images up on his site using 3d height maps to visualize crime (his favorite examples are prostitution and drugs in San Francisco)
http://dougmccune.com/blog/

Add some augmented reality and drones and you can see how Lone Star might work.

Interesting.

Steps to get Lone Star off your back:

1.) Stay out of the hot zones.
2.) Bribe a troll gang to create a hot zone away from where you're on a job.
3.) ??? (600 seconds of terror)
4.) Profit.

doc, thats as old as shadowrun itself. Heck, i suspect even sun tzu have something about distraction in his book.

I know. But being able to visualize exactly where you want to drop that distraction to get the most out of it is interesting.

And that's not that keen a suspicion - he won some of his fight money that way, so he could build parks filled with two of every animal.

And then he herded them all onto boats, so he could beat the crap out of them.

Back on topic, this software looks pretty interesting. Although the way it's presented in the news article made me roll my eyes, because everything they talked about--"We know where there's likely to be crime and we're sending officers over to watch the area" as an example--seems like it ought to be SOP anyhow.
"Sarge, I've been out to that tenement block every day to watch for dealers and prevent fighting. Should I just go out there now?"
"No! Wait until SpatialMap says you should--oh, wait, it just came up on the map. Roll out!"

I know that's not how it's actually being used--just how it seemed from this news vid.

My very first double post, I'm a true DumpShocker now.

Yeah, it is really used more to show where and when the hot spots are based on historical data.

By looking at some analysis I discovered things like most arsonists don't get to work before noon and don't work mondays

Misuse of historic data easily leads to profiling supported by self fulfilling prophecy. "Bad neighborhood x" has a fair number of drug busts when they pull over (insert profile y here) drivers, so cops go out and "prevent more crime" by going to neighborhood x and hassling profile y, leading to a big historic record of criminal activity in area x by profile y, leading cops to go out....
Not much community value added if that happens. Hopefully this program can be used to help PREVENT that sort of thing, not encourage it.

I wonder if similar historic database analysis could be applied to financial records to create profiles of "areas" (companies) where investigations of financial malfeasance should be made. THAT would have some value added.

As someone who lived in a place where hearing the sound of gunfire at night and getting accosted to buy drugs or other services walking around was common, getting regular patrols helps a great deal and didn't cause me to be hassled by the cops. The app is used to show where the highest percentage of crimes are committed and when, that lets you know where and when you should concentrate patrols.

and i guess is easier to, well, visualize then a big spreadsheet of numbers related to various statistics.

This is an incredibly slippery slope. For any comic book nerds here, does this remind you of CLOC from the Sentry comics?

I find the level of paranoia about something that has been widely used (and extremely successful) for 15 years to be kind of cute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Maple

Does that unjustify the paranoia?