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Using GIS for law enforcement

Article  in  Journal of Safety Research · February 2005

DOI: 10.1016/j.jsr.2005.10.003 · Source: PubMed

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 Journal of Safety Research - Traffic Records Forum proceedings
36 (2005) 477 – 479
www.elsevier.com/locate/jsr www.nsc.org

Traffic Records Forum Proceedings Paper

Using GIS for law enforcement

Randy Smith a,*, Andrew J. Graettinger b,1, Kerri Keith c,2, Matthew Hudnall c,2, Allen Parrish c,3
a
Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870290, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
b
University of Alabama, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
c
CARE Research and Development Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, USA
Available online 17 November 2005

Keywords: Law enforcement; Traffic safety; Applications of GIS

1. Problem with an existing crash database analysis software called

In this age of diminishing resources, it is critical that
public safety and law enforcement officials direct their
efforts to areas that will produce the most benefit. In regards
to traffic safety, developing a relationship between where
officers are spending their time (citation locations) and
where the public is exhibiting unsafe driving behavior
(crash locations; Kim & Levine, 1996; Miaou, 2001) will
assist law enforcement officials in optimizing their enforce-
ment strategies.
2. Method
One mechanism that greatly assists public safety
personnel in applying resources appropriately is the ability
to investigate and visualize enforcement activities in
conjunction with identified high risk areas. Over the past
two years, the CARE Research and Development Labora-
tory (CRDL) at the University of Alabama (Parrish, Dixon,
Cordes, Vrbsky, and Brown, 2003; Parrish, Vrbsky, Dixon,
and Ni, 2005), through the development of the Motor
Carrier Analysis Package (MAP), has developed an
electronic citations (E-Citation) application and coupled it
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 205 348 6363; fax: +1 205 348 0219.
E-mail addresses: rsmith@cs.ua.edu (R. Smith),
andrewg@coe.eng.ua.edu (A.J. Graettinger), kkeith@cs.ua.edu (K. Keith),
mhudnall@cs.ua.edu (M. Hudnall), parrish@cs.ua.edu (A. Parrish).
1
Tel.: +1 205 348 1689.
2
Tel.: +1 205 348 5934.
3
Tel.: +1 205 348 3749.
0022-4375/$ - see front matter D 2005 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jsr.2005.10.003
Critical Analysis and Reporting Environment (CARE) to
develop a Geographical Information System (GIS) to
display results spatially. This allows officers to use the
GIS to map vehicle crash and traffic citation locations.
E-Citation programs allow officers to write and print
tickets on laptops in their police cruiser, and transmit those
tickets to a central server within the courts system. The
initial pilot study for the E-Citation project was at a State of
Alabama Weigh Station. The Weigh Station is connected to
the Alabama Office of Courts through a dedicated broad-
band connection. The Weigh Station is further equipped
with a high gain 802.11b wireless connection. Laptops in
patrol cruisers are also equipped with 802.11b connections,
CDPD cellular cards, and integrated Global Position System
(GPS) units. Additionally, the laptops are equipped with a
card insertion scanner. The scanner allows for the automatic
collection of driver license data from licenses that use non-
encrypted magnetic strips or barcodes. Currently all states
except Georgia use non-encrypted data. Following the pilot
study, the E-Citation application has been deployed to all
enforcement units in the commercial vehicles unit of the
Alabama Department of Public Safety. All data, including
the GPS data, is transferred to a central repository. Fig. 1
depicts the E-Citation process. This electronic process has
proved to be a major improvement in both accuracy and
efficiency for the officers using this program.
The CARE application provides ad hoc statistical
analysis on static sets of categorical data (Parrish, Dixon,
Cordes, Vrbsky, & Brown, 2003). CARE was originally
designed to analyze vehicle crash data, however, most of its
techniques are applicable to any type of categorical data
(Parrish, Vrbsky, Dixon, & Ni, 2005). The application
478 R. Smith et al. / Journal of Safety Research - Traffic Records Forum proceedings 36 (2005) 477 – 479

mobile officer
paper
ticket

Electronic defendant
ticket swear
record ticket ticket
history

automated view
upload ticket
District
AOC SQL Court
Server

Fig. 1. E-Citation.

provides analysis techniques including frequency distribu- 3. Results

tions, cross-tabulations, crash rates per population size
(ACT), various techniques for location analysis, and
information mining capabilities.
Using data from the E-Citation application, in conjunc-
tion with CARE and GIS mapping technologies, the MAP
program allows officers an online portal to access numerous
safety-related variables. The online portal allows officers to
view tickets written, statistically analyze crash and ticket
data, and with the GIS, map citation and crash location
data.
Fig. 2 illustrates how MAP can help align enforcement
activities to increase public safety. In Fig. 2, the main North/
South roadway displays a heightened enforcement effort as
depicted by the citations issued. The East/West roadway,
however, is experiencing the larger number of crashes,
making it a candidate for increased enforcement.
By using the GIS tools, officers can simultaneously map
locations of crashes and locations of tickets written. By
performing analysis on this data, officers can get a better

Fig. 2. Enforcement activity versus crash locations.

 R. Smith et al. / Journal of Safety Research - Traffic Records Forum proceedings 36 (2005) 477 – 479
understanding of where problem areas are occurring, and
better utilize resources.
In addition to connectivity to crash data, augmenting the
E-Citation application with GPS information provides law
enforcement officials integrated access to the rich process-
ing capabilities of GIS applications to a wide range of data
(Roche, 2000) including drivers license data, vehicle
registrations, driver citation history, and previous jail
records. Adding GPS coordinates to this data allows safety
officials to view, for example, spatial trends of citations,
historical migration of problem areas as noted by citation,
and spatial analysis of citation location to defendant
address. In Alabama, 8,000 users apply this process and
it has been credited with significantly decreasing the time
needed by law enforcement officers in solving specific
crimes.
4. Summary
The integration of GIS technologies, E-Citation, MAP,
and the CARE application, are having a positive impact on
traffic safety in the state of Alabama. Further, additional
efforts to equip public safety officials with GPS/GIS
capabilities are expected to have a considerable positive
impact on Alabama homeland security.
References
Kim, K., & Levine, N. (1996). Using GIS to improve highway safety.
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 20(4/5), 289 – 302.
Miaou, S. (2001). Tracking crashes on our highways. Texas Transportation
Researcher, 37(3), 13.
View publication stats
479
Parrish, A., Dixon, B., Cordes, D., Vrbsky, S., & Brown, D. (2003). CARE:
A tool to analyze automobile crash data. IEEE Computer, 36(6), 22 – 30.
Parrish, A., Vrbsky, S., Dixon, B., & Ni, W. (2005). Optimizing disk storage
to support statistical analysis operations. Decision Support Systems, 38,
621 – 628.
Roche, J. (2000). Geographic information systems-based crash data
analysis and the benefits to traffic safety. Proceedings of the 2000
Transportation Scholars Conference (pp. 85 – 94).
Randy K. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the
University of Alabama. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from the
University of Alabama in 1998. His research interests are in software
engineering, data mining and knowledge management.
Andrew Graettinger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alabama. His research
interests include geographic information systems, geotechnical engineering,
and site exploration. Graettinger received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
from Northwestern University in 1998.
Kerri Keith is an Assistant Research Engineer with the CARE Research
and Development Laboratory at the University of Alabama. She received a
Bachelor_s degree in Civil Engineering and a Masters of Business
Administration, both from the University of Alabama. She is currently
pursuing a PhD in Civil Engineering at The University of Alabama.
Matthew Hudnall is an Senior Programmer/Analyst in the CARE
Research and Development at the University of Alabama. He has a
Bachelors degree in Mathematics and is pursuing a PhD in Computer
Science at the University of Alabama.
Allen Parrish is Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the
CARE Research and Development Laboratory at the University of
Alabama. He received a Ph.D. in computer and information science from
the Ohio State University in 1990. His research interests are in data mining
and public safety information systems. His sponsors have included the
National Science Foundation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration, the Department of Justice, US Department of
Homeland Security and a variety of public safety-related state agencies.