Background
Background
geo graphic pro filing
Simply put, geographic profiling is a technique that looks at a serial criminal's activities through a geographical perspective.
Instead of profiling a criminal based on their behaviour, past, and characteristics, we are profiling an individual geographically - based on locations of their past crimes to determine their base of operations.
Key concepts
Journey-to-Crime
Offenders will in general travel limited distances to commit their crimes, i.e. they won't go too far from their base
Rational Choice
Offenders want to divert attention from their base but they also want to travel minimal distances to commit crimes
Crime pattern
Crime sites and opportunities are not random. They are influenced by a criminal's mental map of spatial surroundings
Rossmo's formula
The formula developed by Dr. Kim Rossmo is the fundamental calculation used in geographic profiling today.
A grid is overlaid onto the map, and the formula is applied to each square to get the probability of that square being the base of the offender's operations.
Still curious?
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