January 20, 2000
Turning a Map Into a Layer Cake of Information
Linking Geography and Data Can Help Fight Crime, Find Customers and Protect Nature
By CATHERINE GREENMAN
|
Tim Walsh/Marin County Fire Department
|
HOT SPOTS A map used to
show where controlled
burning should take place.
|
ompanies use them to plan store
locations, watchdog groups to track
discrimination and law enforcement
agencies to fight crime.
Geographic information systems, as they
are called, are increasingly ubiquitous computerized mapping programs that help corporations, private groups and governments
make decisions.
These G.I.S. programs work by connecting information stored in a computer database to points on a map. Information is
displayed in layers, with each succeeding
layer laid over the preceding ones, like
transparent sheets on an overhead projector. The resulting maps often reveal trends
or patterns that might be missed if the same
information was presented in a spreadsheet.
A series of slashings in a Brooklyn neighborhood several years ago, for example,
first appeared to police investigators to
have little in common with one another. But
when their locations were displayed on a
map with other data, like known sites where
gang members gather, connections were
made. A local gang, it turned out, had been
conducting initiations, and part of the initiation process had involved slashing attacks.
Although such programs bring hidden
truths to light within countless industries,
the technology itself is little known to those
who do not work with it. Developed in the
early 1960's by Roger Tomlinson, who owns
a consulting firm called Tomlinson Associates in Ottawa, it was originally used under
a contract with the Canadian government
for analyzing data for natural resource
preservation.
| |
|
Geographically based
software can reveal trends
or patterns that could
otherwise be missed.
| |
| |
"Nothing had changed in 3,000 years as
far as the ability to look at maps," Dr.
Tomlinson said. "But analyzing, reading
and getting information out of them was a
real innovation."
Newer generations of the software, by
companies like the Environmental Systems
Research Institute in Redlands, Calif., Intergraph in Huntsville, Ala., and the MapInfo
Corporation of Troy, N.Y., are designed to
run on personal computers and cost from
several hundred dollars to $15,000, depending upon the application. All told, according
to Daratech, a market research company in
Cambridge, Mass., the geographic information systems software industry will have
sales of $700 million this year.
Advocacy groups like Essential Information, founded by Ralph Nader and based in
Washington, use such software to track the
loan activities of financial institutions in
major cities. The group correlates the
branch locations of major banks with loan
activity in specific neighborhoods to determine whether poor neighborhoods have fair
access to mortgages.
"It's been very effective in instances
when you're mapping patterns of unsatisfactory performance," said John Brown,
director of the GIS Project at Essential
Information.
"People who have a hard time
relating to statistics can instantly grasp the
impact of a map."
One hurdle cited by Mr. Brown in the area
of public-interest and geographic information systems, however, is that getting access
to public information could be difficult.
"The problem isn't in the technology," he
said, "but that most advocacy organizations
aren't in a position to go out and generate
their own data. State and local governments
need to invest more in making data sets
available to the public."
Business use is one of the fastest-growing
areas of geographic information system
software, said Scottie Barnes, editor of Geo
Info Systems, a trade publication based in
Eugene, Ore.
|
Dave Chan for The New York Times
|
Geographic information system software was developed in the 1960's by Roger Tomlinson, who owns a consulting firm in Ottawa.
|
Sears, Roebuck & Company department
stores use software from Environmental
Systems Research Institute to pinpoint the
best places to open new stores. The company pulls up neighborhood maps and uses its
customer database to look for areas with
large percentages of homeowners, for example, who are likely to spend more on
home-improvement items, like those sold at
Sears, than renters. "But unless you have
good underlying data, it's really nothing
more than a fancy map," said Greg Kurfoote, director of store location research and
planning.
Meineke Discount Mufflers uses TargetPro software from the MapInfo Corporation
to overlay information on a neighborhood
map about the car owners in the area. Such
information is gathered from the company's
customer database and other market research data from car manufacturers. TargetPro's cost starts at $2,495.
"We can place a store on the map, draw a
radius around it, then ask the system how
many vehicles are in the area," said Paul
Baratta, director of real estate and international development for Meineke. "There
might be 75,000 cars in a given neighborhood, but another layer of data might show
that 65,000 of those are Lexus brands. How
many people are going to put mufflers on a
car that they're trading in every two years?
It looks at the information in a different
way."
Firefighters use geographic information
systems to track potential damage along the
path of forest fires. The Marin County Fire
Department in Northern California deploys
helicopters equipped with Global Positioning System receivers to fly over an area of
land that is ablaze. The receiver collects
latitude and longitude information about the
perimeter of the fire. When the helicopter
lands, that information is downloaded into a
PC, which then connects to a database containing information on land ownership, endangered species and access roads within
the area of the fire. Those maps are printed
out on mobile plotters at the scene and
distributed to firefighters.
"There are still data limitations, but
we're so far ahead of where we were, even
from a year ago," said Tim Walsh, fire
captain specialist at the Marin County Fire
Department. Mr. Walsh added that during
quieter periods, the fire department also
devised maps to chart the potential burning
rates of fires in dry areas to inform county
officials about where to perform controlled
burning.
Conservation groups use the software to
assess the potential hazards caused by environmental changes. "As a tool for integrating data across borders and helping to bring
people together to problem solve, it's proving very useful," said Dr. Richard Wright,
chairman of the education committee at the
University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, a nonprofit organization
in San Diego.
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
|
Police officials in New York City use maps of crime data at meetings where they evaluate police performance precinct by precinct.
|
|
Dr. Wright is working on a project financed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other organizations to create maps of the Tijuana River
watershed, a flood-prone area that spans the
border of San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.
The maps incorporate soil and vegetation
classifications from each city, which allows
planners to see across the borders when
forecasting flood hazards. "The technology
is plenty good enough, but the human and
institutional differences that you're dealing
with can be tough," Dr. Wright said.
Within the last few years, law enforcement agencies around the country have
started using geographic information systems to display, analyze and fight crime. In
many cases, computer-generated maps are
replacing the push-pin maps that used to
line the walls of police departments. Whether it is to stay on the trail of drug gangs,
locate "chop shops" selling parts from stolen cars or pin down serial sex offenders,
such software gives police officers the power to sort and rearrange reams of data to
find a pattern.
In many New York City precincts, for
example, officers dealing with this technology are tucked away in what resemble
makeshift war rooms. The officers compile
reports on crimes like auto thefts, arson and
residential burglaries onto weekly hot
sheets, which they then enter into a computer. The mapping program, in turn, links
each incident to map information by giving
it latitude and longitude coordinates within
a master map of the precinct.
Using maps to visualize spatial relationships is particularly effective when it comes
to nabbing serial offenders because studies
show that they tend to operate in areas that
they are familiar with, near their homes.
Officer Tony Logallo of the Suffolk County
Police Department in New York, who has
used MapInfo since the late 1980's (and who
used the program to recreate the seating
plan of TWA Flight 800 to assist the National
Transportation Safety Board's investigation
of that plane's crash in 1997), designed a
geographical display of registered sex offenders.
"If we have a cluster of sexual assaults
showing up in one area of the map, the first
thing we do is pull up the address points of
registered sex offenders who live nearby,"
Officer Logallo said. "Nine times out of 10,
it's going to be one of those people."
But some civil libertarians question
whether viewing crime activity as a series
of lines and dots on a computer screen can
put people's rights at risk.
Norman Siegel, executive director of the
New York Civil Liberties Union, said that a
cursory viewing of the maps led to "aggression and overzealousness that has led to
questionable street justice." An officer going on duty after looking at a map that
shows a spike in robberies in his area needs
to treat this information carefully, Mr. Siegel said, not use it as fuel to go out and
perform arbitrary searches.
"The concept of mapping is a good one
because it lets the police focus on where and
what particular crime is being committed,"
Mr. Siegel said. "But excessive and arbitrary discretion in an area of high crime
creates a dynamic where tensions between
New Yorkers and the Police Department
are developing, especially along racial
lines."
Police Commissioner Howard Safir of
New York City said the computer maps
were not used to prompt quick judgments by
police officers.
"Just because we have blips
on the map doesn't mean we're going to take
action," he said.
Computerized crime maps rely on correct
information about crimes and where they
occurred from a city's 911 database, an
effort that is both costly and time-consuming. Pinpointing the exact location of a traffic accident or mugging can be difficult, for
example, because the victim or witness
often calls for help at a distance from the
site of the incident.
"Everything stops at the stumbling block
of address purification," Officer Logallo
said.
"For instance, for years we've had a
self-esteem problem with people on the East
End of Long Island not wanting to have
building numbers placed on their houses. I
don't know why folks feel you have a higher
status if you live on Old Watermill Road as
opposed to 19 Old Watermill Road, but it
sure doesn't help us record the incident
properly."
Police officials agree, however, that computer maps are a valuable tool for helping
officers make educated decisions about resource deployment. Mr. Safir said that the
New York City Police Department had recently used computer mapping to track the
most concentrated areas of domestic violence and that precincts were using the
information to plan visits by domestic violence officers, who follow up on emergency
calls. Maps are also being used to pinpoint
areas around the city where there are high
numbers of traffic accidents, he added.
The Vera Institute, a nonprofit organization that designs and implements public
service programs for New York State, is
designing a mapping system that will allow
police authorities across several jurisdictions to view and exchange information
from incident reports according to their
locations and to plan strategies accordingly.
"Police departments will be able to view
crime in relation to its physical properties,
like drug sales that take place in areas
around schools between 3 and 4 p.m.," said
Meryl Schwartz, special counsel to the Vera
Institute. "What makes this most interesting is the ability of the departments to work
together."
The system, which Ms. Schwartz said was
the first statewide effort at sharing information about crimes, will be accessible in
March to several counties near Albany over
a private network.
Some police departments use computer
mapping to encourage residents to get involved in community improvements. The
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department
in North Carolina, for example, uses the
ArcView mapping program of the Environmental Systems Research Institute to track
relationships between criminal activities
and community problems like overgrown
lots, abandoned trash and broken windows.
"Not surprisingly, crimes are often committed in areas where the community has
relinquished guardianship of their surroundings," said Monica Nguyen, a crime
analyst for the Police Department. Ms.
Nguyen said that holding weekly meetings
and opening them to members of the community had prompted people to take initiatives to improve their communities. "By
seeing the violations on the maps and recognizing that they're located right next to
crime clusters," she said, "they get a firsthand look at what happens when they don't
take responsibility."
