Security threat: mitigations

{Vivian + Puck}

Analyzing: environmental criminology

Environmental Criminology regarding terrorist attacks has mostly focused on finding spatial and temporal clusters. Most pertinent are recent findings in a study of Marchment, Bouhana and Gill (2020), illustrating that terrorists display similar distance-to-crime patterns as other perpetrators. This means that proven preventive strategies such as correlated walk analysis (predicting an individuals’ movements) and using GEO-ict techniques to predict the living area of a perpetrator would also be applicable in tracking down a terrorist attacker³.

Routine activities

Routine activities are the day-to-day activities each individual carries out. Travelling from and to your home after a workday or leisure activity, will be a routine for most individuals. The Routine Activity Theory describes the fact that these routine activities are similar for criminals. Offenders show no different patterns within their geographical movements, then any other individual travelling in between their activities.

(burglar, serial offender, thief, sexual offender, robber, physical offender, vandalist, arsonist)

Awareness space

Most individuals carry out their routine activities in the same geographical area throughout their life. They have created a mental map of the geographical space around their home, work and leisure activities. They know the area very well and are aware of all important landmarks. Most criminals have made these same mental maps of their environment eg. awareness space.

(burglar, serial offender, thief, sexual offender, robber, physical offender, vandalist, terrorist, murderer, arsonist)

Predicting: geographically profiling

By calculating a perpetrators previous crime locations, geographical profilers can map out their awareness space and are in some cases able to calculate where a perpetrator’s residence can be found within a 100 meter radius. By using geographical analyses, one can also identify and test significant clustering of crime, frequently described as hot- or cold spots.

Correlated walk analysis

A fairly unknown, but efficient geographical analysis tool, is the correlated walk analysis. Using available geographical data from one perpetrator or individual (such as a victim), a route can be predicted. For instance, if a homicide has taken place and there is no body to be found, but several locations of the whereabouts of the victim that day are known, correlated walk analysis can be used to narrow down the search area. Also, during a manhunt scenario, correlated walk analysis could predict a perpetrators next steps and location.

(terrorism, serial offences, sexual offences, homicide, drug trafficking routes, human trafficking routes)

Convex hull and hot spot analysis

An often used method of geographically analysing crime data is hot spot analysis. Using estimation models, such as Kernel Density Estimation, significant micro places can be identified, in which crimes occur significantly more or less than in other areas. These micro places are also known as hot spots or cold spots.

(burglary, robbery, vandalism, sexual offences, serial offences, arson)

Protecting: ...

Protecting public spaces

{Hier moet een link komen met vulnerabilities, soft targets, measures (structural and event driven)}

EU funding programmes

{Hier moet een stukje komen over EU research (H2020 of REC) en EU hig leve lsecruiti prorammes (ISFP, FP7) , zo link naar PRoTECT en andere EU pagina's}