Issue Archive: July 2009

Breaking Down Barriers

Homeland security and law enforcement serve the highest of purposes—saving lives and protecting property. Today's multifaceted, pressurized security environment makes meeting organizational missions and objectives much more of a challenge. Shrinking operating budgets only add to this complexity.

Modern technology holds a key to overcoming these challenges by providing timely, actionable information to a wider audience. It's people empowerment. By moving past "point solutions" used by a single power user or a specialized department to enterprise environments, security and enforcement agencies allow their personnel to make more accurate decisions faster and with greater collaboration. This means more people throughout the agency benefit from the processing of complex data into useful information that can be shared with the appropriate personnel for an effective, coordinated response.

How Can This Be Done?

Geographic information systems (GIS) have long been used by government agencies to build and maintain data and provide numerous services. Local, state and federal agencies have built large spatial databases over many years of GIS use. GIS mapping technology has become more prevalent in law enforcement and homeland security agencies in recent years. Indeed, geospatial capabilities within data fusion and intelligence centers -- for both law enforcement and homeland security -- are essential for collecting diverse data from multiple sources. Agencies charged with the responsibility of security are constantly searching to identify that nexus where a specific threat, people and location meet. This provides the actionable information to prevent and/or intercept suspects before they commit a crime or carry out a terrorist threat.

By more fully integrating GIS within IT frameworks, government agencies can deliver GIS applications and data that support workflow and mission requirements. Staffers can easily access data and applications for maintaining situational awareness using the Web, mobile devices and other business applications. This new paradigm overcomes previous obstacles by taking full advantage of GIS systems. These include:

• GIS data is often in the hands of a few experts and is not widely distributed to others in the organization
• GIS data and products are frequently not provided for management personnel
• GIS has been limited to desktop applications versus Web and mobile applications

Law enforcement and agencies typically have two central IT systems -- a central records management system (RMS) and a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system -- that can exchange data and operate as one single, comprehensive platform. GIS can operate as the foundation of these systems. GIS can now also be easily integrated within collaborative workflow environments to disseminate GIS information and products into the hands of non-GIS users.

A GIS-enabled platform integrates existing tools (such as link analysis, remote sensing and computer modeling) and emerging technologies (such as video surveillance, hazardous material detectors, license plate readers and biometric sensors). GIS links information systems with data capture devices and uses geography or the geographic component of data to link these independent pieces into a single, comprehensive whole. Data is opened up to the entire organization. The ability to quickly map data—whether it’s for understanding events on the ground, preparing for future incidents, or responding to an emergency—gives law enforcement officials what they need instantly. GIS provides benefits in four key functional areas:

• Foundation data fused with dynamic data
• Planning and analysis functionality
• Decision making support through situational awareness
• Information dissemination

GIS works within IT as the framework to capture, model, identify and manipulate data about behavior. Crime and terrorist acts are committed by someone at a specific location. To prevent crime or terrorist acts, you need something that can help track and model behavior to understand where problems are emerging. GIS technology can quickly access and integrate relevant variables (the location of incidents, common elements, time sequence, geographic features common to incident types, demographics and other variables) that establish patterns and trends. These results can then be fused with dynamic data feeds (traffic patterns, camera surveillance, 9-1-1 calls, weather, etc.) to develop comprehensive situational awareness and better public safety resource deployments for interdiction and response. This information can be secured behind firewalls and supplied to appropriate officials through authentication protocols.

Connecting the Dots

When GIS is integrated into an agency's IT architecture, it helps knock down barriers within an organization as well as between separate agencies. When information can be provided to operations personnel in a geospatial or mapped context, a higher level of effectiveness in making discoveries, tracking incidents and facilitating a coordinated, multijurisdictional response is possible. Better mutual aid agreements can be developed and executed using shared information.

In a hypothetical scenario, a citizen calls a 9-1-1 emergency operator in the middle of the night to report a suspicious vehicle parked outside a vacant warehouse. The caller sees several men enter and exit the building multiple times. The unknown men are carrying wooden boxes out of the structure and into their car. They are dressed in dark clothing, and there are no lights on inside or outside the building.

The 9-1-1 operator dispatches police to investigate, but the suspects are gone by the time law enforcement arrives. The responding officers note that the building was secure and there was no evidence to support illegal activity such as a burglary.

Police contact the owner or responsible party (RP) of the building to check inside. Finding nothing immediately suspicious, the officers question the RP to determine what might have been removed from the building as well as whether other persons, employees or family members have access to the building and for what purposes. The officers gather information regarding any missing inventory and the names of those having access to the building during off-hours. The RP cannot determine any missing inventory but provides the names of others who may have access, advising the officers that there would be no reason for anyone to be there after hours or to remove anything during that time. The police already have a description of the suspects' vehicle from the caller and, although there is no obviously missing inventory, may pursue a possible connection between the described vehicle and any other people identified by the RP as having potential access. Theofficer re-contacts the person who originally placed the call and obtains the best description possible of the subjects observed in the darkness at the warehouse. The description is given to the RP, who is unable to make a connection. One of the officers completes a suspicious activity report (SAR) and submits it.

The report is entered into a CAD system, which also files this information in the RMS and geo-coded (matching an address to a location on a map). The suspicious activity is related to the address and, if the vehicle description is complete, to the vehicle as well. The report is also flagged for review by the crime and/or intelligence analyst who begins to conduct an analysis.

A comprehensive workflow created using collaboration software and geographic rules (GIS) can alert staff working at different agencies in the area. The workflow will trigger predefined analytic processes for agencies within a specific range such as a zip code, police district or other city or county jurisdiction.

With the incident location on the map, a law enforcement official, homeland security specialist, analyst or appropriate person with access to either the CAD or the RMS can retrieve the report for further investigation. From their computer screen, analysts can open up a digital map, see an icon showing the incident location, then click on it to view the incident and its descriptive information. This data may include the time and date of the incident, the person phoning in the emergency and other intelligence collected by the investigating officer.

To determine if there is currently any need for additional action, analysts can run simple processes to locate similar incidents near the area of interest. They can perform a spatial query to see if any high-priority buildings (such as a hazardous materials warehouse or a government building) have had any other suspicious activity reports filled out and look for similarities.

They can also look at other high-risk assets within proximity of an incident. A simple GIS function can show the locations of major power stations, water treatment centers and large complexes such as a sports facility. Analysts can point and click their computer mouse to check for any calls for service. Viewing a map-based common operating picture with reports and information linked from fire, police, emergency medical services (EMS) and other services, allow analysts to view any related activity to see if there are potentially related incidents.

In addition to looking at property and resources, analysts can identify those who have access to the building and check for prior criminal behavior, arrests or associations with other known criminals. Analysts can research all vehicles owned by these people and/or their associates through the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), looking for a possible match to the vehicle described from the original call. Similarly, a query can be entered and the results mapped showing convicted felons, parolees and probationers in the area as well as their known vehicles, helping analysts look for any connection. They can check partial license plate numbers for a potential match. These tasks, once generated, can be monitored as a workflow by one or many individuals, depending on the priority of the task and the security clearance given to the task.

Through the citation and/or field interview databases, analysts can also look for similar cars that have been stopped recently in the area. In this scenario, the results show that a similar vehicle (same make and model) was recently ticketed by police because a taillight was not functioning properly. The operator then queries the driver's name from the report stored in the RMS database. The driver's home address is available; the person has a criminal record.

Viewing a digital map display along with a record listing the location of the driver's last known whereabouts, the operator quickly places a heightened status alert for that vehicle. Law enforcement is notified, and officers are sent to the address of the driver for questioning. The common operating picture, available to other communications centers and agencies and linked by the CAD and RMS, shows in real time the law enforcement vehicles moving to the address of the person of interest.

A mobile data terminal in a patrol car allows law enforcement officers assigned to investigate a suspect’s location to view information maintained by the state’s fusion center as well as other databases including DMV, the state Department of Justice and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). They can view information about the individual they will be questioning as well as the SAR that initiated the investigation. They can perform a query to see if the person in question has any known aliases, a criminal record or gang affiliations. They have access to detailed information prior to arriving on scene; they are informed, prepared and ready for the assignment they are walking into. The patrol officer, after interviewing the individual in question, does not obtain any information to suggest illegal activity. The operator can next check on the owner of the building and related property data by accessing tax assessor records:

• Does the owner of the building have a criminal record?
• Does the building contain hazardous material?
• Is the building in proximity or connected to a frequently visited site like a sports arena or public office?

The analyst next obtains information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to examine any reports of illegal weapons, explosives or other substances at the building of interest. The analyst discovers no such reports have been made. After coordinating with law enforcement and state and federal agencies, several assessments are made: The driver and the owner of the building are not suspected of any illegal activity. There is no evidence to suggest any illegal activity has occurred. Had further investigation been needed, the enterprise GIS infrastructure provides the capability to integrate any new information and link it to other relevant geographic features for further analysis.

Injecting GIS into an organization's bloodstream dramatically expands the reach of geospatial intelligence beyond experts and analysts to the entire workforce. GIS professionals can focus on their core capabilities for building advanced applications and managing, editing and maintaining large databases and spatial networks. Agencies benefit from using server-based GIS configured to support workflows and link CAD, RMS and other systems to produce actionable information. An enterprise GIS provides complex information in a geospatial context that can be shared, easily understood and rapidly acted on. Most importantly, people and agencies develop a better capability to coordinate and share resources. Information, once captured, can be integrated with other data, analyzed and disseminated to anyone who needs it, no matter the location or agency for which the requester works. It's a new law enforcement and homeland security IT approach that’s changing the way agencies operate in the new millennium.

Paul Christin is Homeland Security Specialist for ESRI (Redlands, CA). He is responsible for understanding the critical issues and challenges facing federal, state, local and tribal agencies involved in the homeland security mission and to apply GIS technology in solving those challenges. He has been involved in homeland security and civil defense activities in Europe and the Middle East. He can be reached at (909) 793-2853, ext. 3329 or via e-mail at pchristin@esri.com.