WA police use biz intelligence to catch criminals

The Western Australia Police Service is set to rollout its Business Intelligence mapping system, Insight, which helps pinpoint crime patterns both statewide and in individual police station locations.

The system "gives us a bigger picture of what is happening out there," Sergeant Phil McLaclan told ZDNet Australia.

Police officers input crime information, such as the precise time of a burglary and street address, into the local police station's computer system running Seagate Software's Seagate Information solution -- a BI application deployed under Seagate's Crystal branding. This information is processed overnight and provided visually on a map of the District. The data is also processed as charts and graphs allowing trends to be more easily spotted.

The Insight mapping system allows the police see what is happening in their district within 24 hours of reports being processed. Previously information was recorded within various databases and both extracted and plotted on maps and graphs manually -- taking up to 10 days to prepare.

"The aim is to shorten the batch time so that incidents show up on reports almost in real time," Insight Project Manager, Inspector Ken Post said in a prepared statement.

At present the program only collates incident data, although to prevent a Police Officer having to access disparate databases. The inclusion of criminals' personal details "may happen in future rollouts of the system" Sergeant McLachlan said.

WAPS has secured AU$142 million Government funding over a five-year period for the program and commenced the pilot phase of Insight in Perth's Western suburbs in July last year. A full rollout to all Police Stations within Western Australia began this month and will be completed by August 25.