Prospective crime mapping in operational context Final report

Figure A1.1: Internal application utilising existing GIS for visualisation2. A stand-alone application may be developed that can process crime data exported fromexisting IT systems. The major disadvantage of this approach is that data have to first beextracted, stored on some form of portable media and then imported to the externalapplication. This takes time, particularly where the maximum rate of data transfer possiblefor the portable media used is slow. The use of Universal Serial Bus hard disk dives (USBHDD) or Firewire connections can increase the celerity of data transfer, but suchconnections are typically disabled on police IT systems for reasons of security.Once the data have been processed they can be relayed to the user in one of two ways.a) As shown in Figure A1.2, data may be imported into an existing GeographicalInformation System and used to produce maps. A disadvantage with thisapproach is that further time is required to import and manipulate the data, and toadd any required images of the urban backcloth.b) Alternatively, a GIS visualisation tool may be implemented within the stand-aloneapplication to allow maps to be generated and interrogated within it (see FigureA1.3). This has the distinct advantage that the process of visualising the data canbe automated and images may be produced to a standard (but modifiable)template.75