Kerala Police plan GIS-based crime mapping

Arjun Raghunath

Express News Service
First Published : 02 Jul 2010 04:24:46 AM IST
Last Updated : 02 Jul 2010 09:54:19 AM IST

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With Geographical Information System (GIS) and Spatial Mapping being widely used in various fields, the Kerala Police is also gearing up to make use of the scope of the new technology for better management of law and order in the State.
The Police Department will be developing a GIS-based crime mapping facility for effectively managing the data pertaining to law and order and thereby to make intelligent decisions with emphasis on spatial logistics and patterns.
As a prelude to this, the state police have started imparting training to cops in GIS technology and its applications in crime mapping. The Technopark-based Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K) is imparting the training.
To begin with, training is being provided to the officials of the Special Branch - Crime Intelligence Division. The first batch has completed training. The training will be extended to all the wings in the Police Department in the due course, sources in the Department told ‘Express’.
The training programme is carried out in three levels - introductory, advanced and decision support. Emphasis will be on GIS fundamentals and data generation, spatial analysis and decision making, IIITM-K sources said.
GIS-based crime mapping could be utilised for easy and effective analysis of data pertaining to crimes, traffic accidents and other law and order problems in each locations. It would help easy deployment of forces based on the crime characteristics of each region. Digital mapping also helps effective traffic management.
With the State Government recently issuing a circular that all the Government Departments should share the digital maps they have prepared, the Police Department also expects to get spatial map of the State from other departments.
Already several departments are making use of spatial mapping technology for various purposes. Moreover 75 percent of the data being used by various departments are location specific. Hence several departments have prepared spatial maps. In order to avoid repetition, the Government has asked the departments to share the maps, sources said.