A Bespoke Forensics GIS Tool

TL;DR

This paper introduces a custom-designed forensic GIS tool tailored to law enforcement needs, addressing limitations of existing solutions by providing specialized features for geospatial crime investigation.

Contribution

The paper develops a bespoke forensic GIS system based on specific law enforcement requirements, enhancing geospatial analysis capabilities for criminal investigations.

Findings

The new tool meets investigators' specific needs.

Successful deployment in law enforcement enhances crime analysis.

Improves accuracy and efficiency in geospatial investigations.

Abstract

Today a lot of digital evidences for crime investigation includes a geospatial component. This data comes from various sources such as smartphones, tablets, navigation systems, digital camera with global positioning system (GPS), etc. The geospatial data plays a crucial role in crime investigation such as helping to tracking suspects, profiling serial offenders, recognizing trends in criminal activities, just a few. Many techniques and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools have been used to extract, analyse and visualise geospatial data. However, in some specific circumstances, the existing tools are not suitable for use as they do not meet investigators needs. This paper presents a bespoke forensic GIS tool based on specific requirements of the investigators of a law enforcement Department. Firstly the paper discusses some existing forensic GIS tools and environments in practices, and then it presents some investigators requirements and show the unsuitability of the existing tools. The paper continues with the presentation of the system architecture of the new tool and its components. It also introduces various applications and use cases which have been deploying at the Department as an evaluation of the developed tool.