MRIA Alberta Presents Contextual Analysis of Crime: City of Edmonton Pilot Project

The Contextual Analysis of Crime, a pilot project in advanced data analytics aimed at fighting crime, has produced a way not only to predict crime, but also to zero in on why it’s likely to happen.

This pilot program produced a method by which the Neighbourhood Empowerment Team (consisting of a social worker, a police officer and a youth worker) can now predict where crime is likely to occur more frequently, and also know what factors will tend to cause the crime. Conversely, the project produced ways of showing where, and why, crime intensity will be low.

The ‘contextual analysis of crime’ project—done by social worker Kris Andreychuk, Supervisor of Community Safety, and Stephane Contre, Chief Analytics Officer with the Open City Team—involved taking basic police crime stats and analysing them in conjunction with 233 other kinds of data.

About two-thirds of the data sets used—‘negatives’ ranging from abandoned stolen vehicle locations, rowdy party complaints, litter, graffiti, and proximity to liquor stores, and ‘positives’ including front-yards-in-bloom, picnic sites, and playgrounds—came from the City’s wide range of open data sets.

Crunching the data through a sophisticated computer algorithm, Stephane and Kris produced 92 ‘rules’, sets of multiple factors which, taken together, increased or decreased the likelihood of property or violent crime occurring within each of more than 11,000 grid squares within the city.

Speakers: Kris Andreychuk & Stephane Contre, City of Edmonton

Advanced registration is required. For more information, and to register, please visit the MRIA Portal at: http://mriaportal.ca/imislive/mria

Cost: $10 MRIA & ACE Members, $15 Non-members

(ACE Members use code ACEMRIA when registering)

FREE for Students

A boxed sandwich lunch will be provided