A Bespoke Forensics GIS Tool
📝 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.
💡 Analysis
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.
📄 Content
A Bespoke Forensics GIS Tool
Almar Tillekens
The Netherland
almar@digital-expertise.nl
Nhien-An Le-Khac,
School of Computer Science
University College Dublin,
Ireland
an.lekhac@ucd.ie
Thanh Thoa Pham Thi
Computer Science Department
Maynooth University,
Ireland
thoa.pham@nuim.ie
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 don’t 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/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.
Keywords—digital forensics; GIS forensic environments; crime
mapping; OpenStreet Map;
I.
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the spatial data within seized data conducted in
crime investigations is ubiquitous. This spatial data can make a
huge contribution to investigations such as tracking suspects,
profiling serial offenders, recognizing trends in criminal
activities to address them at an early stage, among other
purposes. For example, in the digital forensic related to online
child abuse exploitation investigations, investigators can use
packages ZiuZ VizX [1] and Blue Bear LACE [2] software
packages to select, categorize and analyse relevant materials.
These software can filter huge amounts of pictures and export
images with location data, but miss the ability to visualise the
pictures with location information.. In general, before using
and analysing the spatial information a digital forensic
investigator must collect the digital data, process it and also be
in charge of proper storage so the chain of custody and
evidence is ensured. One last step before the crime investigator
or analyst can do their work, is the digital forensic investigator
should ensure that the processed spatial data can be showed on
a map. However, the most correct way to show that spatial
information on a map is still a challenge.
Indeed, there are more uses of mapping software and GIS
services in law enforcement (LE) agencies. The fact is a wealth
of spatial information is not efficiently exploited. For example,
in the digital forensic unit of a LE department, every
investigation will be registered and saved in one storage
location including seized digital devices and the location where
the digital devices are captured. Furthermore the location of
camera surveillances and its video images are also registered.
When officers from a crime unit are investigating a specific
crime and want to know whether there are images from
surveillance cameras available around the crime scene (or the
location where the digital device are captured), they will check
if the vicinity of the crime scene itself or surveillance cameras
are visible. By using mapping software/GIS services this
information could be made quickly and effectively visible.
Hence, the combined visualization of different types of
spatial information, i.e. crime scene and camera surveillances
location, can be of great value in investigating criminal
activities. From the investigators perspective based on the
above example, it is possible to find the creator of the seized
photo’s when he / she is caught on surveillance cameras at the
moment they were taken.
Normally, to make this spatial information visible to crime
investigators, in the traditional approach, third-party map
application such as Google map, MapInfo, ArcGIS, etc. has to
be used. However, this method of processing geospatial
information is not flexible and efficient enough in terms of
making relationships between different sources of geospatial
information, e.g. from camera surveillances and seized images.
Moreover, these map software/services are normally designed
for general purposes rather than for forensic perspectives. For
example,
the
computer
systems
with
these
map
software/services are required to connect to the Internet. In
real-world application, research data and especially an ongoing
investigation, canno
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