Connecting the dots: Utilizing crime scripting to leverage multimodal data and innovative techniques in a meaningful manner

• In Event: WG-PLACE 1: Crime Scripting

Abstract

The growing availability of new and emerging data sources (e.g., mobile phone data, social media data, and open access administrative data) offer promising avenues for crime related research. For today’s generation of researchers, the challenge appears to lie less in accessing rich datasets than in creating value from them. With the development of powerful computational techniques, such as those emerging from the field of artificial intelligence, the focus is on formulation of useful hypotheses, and meaningful organization of knowledge. Thus, the question remains how these multimodal data can be placed in context to create value from it and how to organize knowledge in a meaningful way so that innovative techniques can leverage it. This article discusses the potential value of using crime scripting to put data in context and utilize novel techniques for the purpose of problem-oriented and intelligence-led crime reduction. Crime scripting is an analytical method for generating, organizing, and systematizing knowledge about the procedural aspects and procedural requirements of crime commission. Here, crime scripting acts as a generic knowledge structure (or ‘backbone’) method, where the dots with multimodal data and innovative techniques are connected.

Authors

• Thom Snaphaan, Avans University of Applied Sciences & Ghent University

• Hervé Borrion, University College London