May 10, 2007
By Emily van Rijswijck
THERE is a weapon in the crime-fighting arsenal that is still largely untapped.
At a seminar earlier this week, the City's corporate geoinformatics department (CGIS) focused on safety and security, with the emphasis on showing that geographic information systems (GIS) were a powerful tool for tracking crime trends and highlighting crime hotspots.
Visual information in the form of maps, overlaid with detailed data, are two defining concepts of geographic information systems, making GIS a valuable tool for crime fighting.
Speaking at the seminar, Marcelle Hattingh, the CGIS director, said the importance of spatial information for urban regions was no longer questioned.
Aiming her comments directly at the GIS community, she asked that the role of GIS in crime prevention be investigated further. The aim of the seminar was to create connecting points between different parties and to listen and to talk to each other, Hattingh stressed.
Spatial information
Stuart Martin, the chairman of GIS South Africa Gauteng, the local branch of the national organisation, said there were still not nearly enough initiatives created around the use of spatial information. Satellite imagery created a vast visual history of an area over time, which meant that one could build information in layers, plot trends and look at specific changes over time, he said.
By illustrating something visually it "immerses people in their reality" in a very virtual way, he said. As an example, Martin illustrated how a map could help Alexandra residents see how flooding could affect people living in dwellings built below flood lines.
"Spatial information makes getting the bigger picture just so much easier."
A GIS map was also used during the planning of the presidential inauguration at the Union Buildings. One of the crucial aspects of spatial information was that it allowed preparedness. "It allows you to communicate, to create awareness and to stimulate better understanding." This in turn led to better decision-making, Martin asserted.
Information sharing
Having access to the right kind of date is key to creating a viable GIS map. Information sharing can be as simple as reporting broken streetlights and as complex as creating data sets from a wide range of factual information on a specific area.
Enough data existed and South Africa was indeed data-rich, said Michael O'Donovan, a statistician and analyst. The problem was that the information was often not shared. "We do not have a culture of sharing information, a culture of insight."
Added to this, too much money was spent on software and too little on human resources and skills training. "Data is never perfect - data is often wrong - but it is the human interaction [with data] that creates useful insights."
Marcelle Hattingh, Director of corporate geoInformatics department at the City of Johannesburg with GIS specialists who spoke on safety and security at the GIS seminar
(Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg)
O'Donovan presented a simple GIS project on crime based on data in the public domain and open source software. As a rule, expectations about crime were not borne out and much of the debate on the problem was based on presumptions. "The inner city is not necessarily a hot bed of crime. The relationship between poverty and crime is unclear."
He said that the amount of data available was impressive and it should be used to understand the driving forces behind crime.
Practical application
Speaking about community safety through environment management, Geoff Green of Precinctweb said his organisation specifically looked at environmental factors in the community and how these affected safety and security.
Precinctweb is a community-based organisation that uses GIS tools to monitor crime in the Parkview South African Police Service precinct. The project was started more than two years ago and has contributed substantially to visible policing by using community ambassadors and safety wardens.
Portraying crime trends and hotspots using a GIS map of the area had also helped to understand and manage the crime problem better, he said. One of the biggest challenges was keeping information up to date.
Precinctweb made use of Google Earth to plot the Parkview area, overlaid with data on every incident of crime, the type of crime committed, and the date and time of the incident. The information was plotted on the spatial map and clearly showed trends and specific problem areas.
In addition, Green and his team had developed a 3D model of St Theresa's School to assist police in the event of an emergency. Creating such models of the City's main soccer venues would assist substantially in disaster management and crowd control during the 2010 World Cup.
One aspect of crime mapping relates specifically to cellphone analysis, which is being researched by Anthony Cooper, who is involved with information communication technology at the CSIR.
Criminals seemed to make an indiscriminate amount of phone calls, he said. His aim was to create a spatial model that could be used by the police to tighten the noose on future offenders by plotting cellphone calls. Cellphone mapping was increasingly being used to break alibis, he confirmed. However, it was not yet used as evidence for prosecution.
Such mapping helped to solve crimes and was useful in briefing new officers on a case, he said. "It can definitely improve the targeted intelligence gathering because it can be used to determine the activity space of criminals."
By simply plotting the cellphone activity of a suspect, his research has made for some interesting insights into criminals' behaviour. For example, it confirms that crimes occur close to an offender's anchor points – near to his home, work, favourite pub, and so on.
Property crime occurs further from anchor points; violent crimes are usually closer.
Disaster management
A number of City officials attended the seminar, including regional representatives and people from the disaster management, urban management and emergency management services units. Jacob Modiba, the senior GIS specialist in disaster management, said his unit was looking at using 3D models of soccer stadiums and was already talking to role players.
Dawie van Vuuren, from MetroGIS, said maps were useful for disaster management, especially for planning to avoid possible disasters. For this reason improving risk information was important – the quality, coverage and accuracy of information was crucial, he said.
Too often "things are happening on an ad hoc basis or data are collected but are not backed up by GIS tools".
Land Information System
In closing Hattingh confirmed that there were several GIS ventures under way in Joburg.
CGIS was nearing completion of phase one of its Land Information System (LIS), which would enable an integrated approach to land use and property information. The system would bring together data from several City sources, including GIS, valuations, revenue and customer relations. It would link maps, property information and billing information, giving the user more detail than previously possible.
Hattingh said the system would create a virtual footprint of all city buildings and the new SAP billing system would feed off it. In the second phase, the LIS will be integrated into a GIS.
The Inner City Summit on 5 May had pointed to a number of challenges specifically for CGIS. "We have lots of challenges - creating an integrated system for bad buildings; tracking littering and lack of services; and how we can capture this on GIS and make it available to the City, especially for urban management and planning."
The seminar was part of the national geographic information systems week, running from 7 to 11 May.
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