—Robert Cheethan, Avencia Incorporated
HunchLab is a web-based software application developed with support from the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia and a research grant from the National Science Foundation to facilitate more effective policing through situational awareness. HunchLab combines ArcGIS Server technology with spatial statistics to automatically sift through millions of police incident records on a daily basis and analyze changes in the prevalence of crime incidents by comparing the most recent events against historical data for each location. When HunchLab finds an emerging cluster of crime incidents, it dispatches e-mail alerts with links to a web-based reporting system where designated law enforcement personnel can examine the incidents contributing to the spike and use this information to proactively plan a response strategy. This presentation will outline the grant process that has facilitated development of the HunchLab application and examine its implementation and use by police departments in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Tacoma, Washington.