Geographic Profiling
Last summer, Professor Wilpen Gorr participated in a two-day round table
panel convened by the National Institute of Justice on geographic
profiling, a methodology used for investigating serial crimes and the
subject of the first Numb3rs TV program. Geographic profiling narrows the
area for investigation based on the pattern of crime locations and models
for distance traveled to crimes. A problem with this emerging methodology
is that it jumped from promising idea to commercial software without
sufficient empirical calibration and validation. Furthermore, validation
has some intriguing complexities.
The resulting report from the panel, "A Methodology for Evaluating Geographic Profiling Software", has just been released.
Based on his experience in developing the field of crime forecasting, Wil wrote a working paper which he discussed at the round table, "Framework for Validating Geographic Profiling." This paper has been widely quoted on listserves and in the researcher and user communities concerned with geographic profiling.
The research interests of Dr. Gorr, Professor of Public Policy and Management Information System, include geographic information systems and management science models applied to public sector problems. He is the founder of InfoLink, a school-to-work program for inner city high school students conducted at Carnegie Mellon. He just concluded a five-year term as editor, International Journal of Forecasting. Gorr is the recipient of the Best Paper Award, American Information Systems Society, for "ServiceNet: An Agent-Based Framework for E-Government," August 2001.