the utility of criminality analysis techniques in frontline oa sam mitchell support to operations,...

The Utility of Criminality Analysis techniques in frontline OA

Sam MitchellSupport to Operations, Dstl

01 Sep 2010

© Crown copyright 2010. Published with the permission of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory on behalf of the Controller of HMSO

August 23, 2010 Dstl is part of the Ministry of Defence

UNCLASSIFIED

Content• Who are we• Criminality analysis - What is it and why are we

interested?• Geospatial profiling

o Anchor point Identification What it is What already exists

o Prospective Crime Mapping What it is What already exists

o Utility to Support to Operations


UNCLASSIFIED

“Providing analysis support to exercises and operations through timely application of science and technology”

• Operational Analysts directly supporting operational commands and warfare centres brought together as the Support to Operations Group within the PCS Department, providing:o Support to Current Operationso Support to Planning for Future

Operationso Support to Trialso Support to Exerciseso Rapid Operational Analysiso Operational and Exercise Data

Who does it?PCS Support to Operations Group


UNCLASSIFIED

What it is and Why we’re interested

• Why we’re interested:o Looking to improve the OA

support to deployed HQ planning and decision making.

o Looking at providing analysis to contribute to the IED ‘Prevent’ strand

o Another club in the OA golf bag

• What it is:o Civilian policing authorities

use various criminality analysis techniques to help solve and prevent crime

o Based on the premise that humans are inherently predictable

Serial offending criminals set patterns as a result of numerous variables (time, transport, etc)

Insurgents will similarly be likely to set patterns


UNCLASSIFIED

Geospatial Profiling- Anchor Point Identification

• Geospatial profiling is based on the premise that everyone has a pattern to his or her daily lives o including a general geographical area in which they spend the majority

of their time, and the principle of least effort • Career criminals and serial offenders are no different, they have a

comfort zone, typically within driving distance from their home. o Committing a crime in this area affords the offender the benefit of

familiarity but is not too close so that they maintain anonymity• Geospatial profiling was developed by Canadian Mr Rossmo whilst

studying for his PhDo Does not widely distribute, believes strongly in the analyst in the loopo Variety of different commercially available products


UNCLASSIFIED

What already exists• Rigel© Software developed by Dr Rossmo and

used by civilian law enforcement agencieso The algorithm takes a series of linked events and

predicts the likely location of an anchor point such as a residence or workplace of the offender.

o This information can be used to prompt further intelligence collection or can be combined with other existing intelligence to trigger action

o The algorithm contains a distance decay function. The premise behind this is that the farther a criminal travels to commit their crime the more it costs in terms of money, time and energy.

o The distance decay function has been found to vary in different types of crimes


UNCLASSIFIED

Everything else

• Since the creation of Rigel numerous other software packages now exist such as Crimestat III a spatial statistical package that interfaces with Geographic Information System (GIS) programmes such as ArcGIS®, MapInfo®, and Surfer for Windows®.

o These commercially available products have several features, including those which calculate travel distances from origin to destination, to predict likely residence of serial offenders.

o They use a known sample from other crimes and employ the distance decay function.


UNCLASSIFIED

Prospective crime mapping

• Aim: To determine where the next incident will occur• Usage: Knowing when and where to deploy resources • Like Hotspot analysis

o Take for example burglary; the risk of a house getting burgled is not even and will vary by area and within areas some homes are victimised more than others

• Where this differs from classical hotspot analysis is that research has indicated that spatial and temporal patterns of crime are fluid. Johnson et al and others have demonstrated that the risk of burglary appears not only to move, but to cluster in space and time in much the same way as a communicable disease.


UNCLASSIFIED

What already exists

• The requirement for tools to help analysts recognise patterns has accelerated the development of forecasting or predictive software

• One such tool developed by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and The Engineer Research and Development Centre's Topographic Engineering Centre (TEC) is Threat Mapper

• Given an input data set of past threat activity such as IED events and any relevant feature information such as roads and rivers Threat Mapper will forecast future eventso The likelihood of future incidents in different areas is calculated by establishing

spatial patterns between the past events and surrounding feature information


UNCLASSIFIED

Dstl use in Frontline OA

• Insurgents thought to behave much like ‘criminals’• Research by National Ground Intelligence Centre (NGIC) and Defence Research

and Development Canada (DRDC) found IED locations followed similar patterns to those identified in “western crime”

• Dstl Information Management Department are developing software for use in the Counter-IED arena based on these criminality analysis techniques• Using historical data sets looking at IEDs linked via biometrics, MO, geospatial

proximity, and technical signatures • Initial results show the technique to be successful at reducing the search area for an

IED anchor point. • IED specific algorithm developed and ratified against different historic data

• The Applied Geo-profiling Tool (AGT) for anchor point identification was taken to Theatre January 2010• Trialed to determine usability• Discussed with military stakeholders• Brought feedback for the developers


UNCLASSIFIED

Future use in Frontline OA

• Ideally we’d like a purpose built Geo-profiling toolset combining these analysis techniques to run on existing GIS software packages with counter insurgency operation specific algorithmso Locationo Type of threat

• The application of this, would allow the deployed analyst to provide an additional statistical probability in the identification of an anchor point to the intelligence cell which could contribute to the planning, targeting or influence processes, or the location of future threats for troops on the ground.


UNCLASSIFIED

Future use in Frontline OA

• For Anchor point identification in contrast to the use in law enforcement which lies late in the intelligence cycle the utility for a military application could be earlier in the cycle where incidents are linked perhaps by MO and technology but no further intelligence exists. o Here, with an understanding of the sensitivity to error, its use could for example

prompt the allocation of intelligence collection assets. This would not prohibit its further use down the line, for which it was originally intended, where a higher statistical probability of area identification would be likely.

• It is important to remember that the actions of the coalition forces will affect any given pattern seen.o So when attempting prospective incident mapping our own temporal and spatial

footprint should therefore be taken into account, as it is likely that any change in our tactical decision-making, in general or in response to an attack would lead to an alteration in the pattern seen.


UNCLASSIFIED

Questions?

the utility of criminality analysis techniques in frontline oa sam mitchell support to operations,...

Documents

analysis support

oa support

wecriminality analysis

exercise datapcs support

operations groupwhat

distance decay function

anonymitygeospatial

loopvariety of different