The Times: Tech column - Geographic profiles/Broadband boom
By David Rowan
FOR INVESTIGATORS hunting the Washington DC sniper last week, one of the toughest challenges was to sift the mountain of raw data they were receiving about potential suspects to work out where he or she was likely to strike next. There was no time simply to rely on a hunch - so instead they turned to a fascinating piece of software to build a "geographic profile" of the killer.
The program was developed by Kim Rosso, a former Canadian police detective who realised that a serial killer balances a desire to remain in familiar territory with a need to travel just far enough to avoid being recognised.
By building a mathematical pattern of his probable future movements, Rosso claimed, the software could succeed where thousands of police man-hours had failed.
The Java-based software, marketed as Rigel by a Vancouver company, had worked before. In Britain it helped to solve a sexual assault in Leeds four years ago, and later a series of bank robberies in the Midlands; it has also been used by police forces in Canada and the US. Behind it lies a technique known as "geo-profiling" which, Rosso says, builds on the link between the physical place in which a crime occurred and the known propensities of serial criminals for choosing their victims and locations.
Detectives feed into the software the geographical co-ordinates of the known crime areas, adding details of the crimes and their list of suspects. Using mathematical algorithms, Rigel then weighs up the chances of the crimes being linked, and prioritises suspects according to the data. Detectives can then see the results on screen as a contoured two or three-dimensional map which can help them to work out where the offender may be based.
By itself, the software cannot solve a crime. But detectives who use it say that it helps to narrow their suspect list as effectively as psychological profiling - even if its use might make a less exciting movie out of a case such as the one dominating Washington.
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AND NOW some news I really ought to have brought you back in the last century: the number of British homes and businesses with broadband internet connections has, in the past week, finally hit a million.
It has been an excruciatingly slow journey towards broadband Britain, not helped in the least by the repeated reluctance of Oftel, the telecoms regulator, to challenge BT's self- interested delays in opening up its infrastructure. Rather cheekily, Oftel is claiming the credit for creating "the most competitive broadband market in Europe" - in particular, by "encouraging" BT to cut the wholesale price of its digital subscriber line (DSL) connections last spring to £14.75 a month. Almost instantly, this led to a doubling of demand to 8,000 new installations a week, which makes one wonder why Oftel had not thought of it earlier. Since then, the figure has risen to 20,000 a week.
There are now more than 100 broadband internet service providers competing for your business - and as a result prices are falling sharply. AOL recently cut its monthly fee from £35 to £28, and Tiscali has just launched a medium-speed service for less than £20. One ISP, Gio Internet, has gone as low as £18, including VAT, a suspiciously cheap sum for a viable long term business. Before making your decision, study the findings posted on an independent website such as adslguide.org.uk, as well as the customer complaints charted on other sites with names such as a "BTopenwoe" and "NTHellWorld". A reliable service is more important than price. And for those of you living in the four homes in ten still not served by DSL connections, I can only suggest that you ask Oftel why it's taking BT so long to hook you up.
(The Times, October 15 2002)
FOR INVESTIGATORS hunting the Washington DC sniper last week, one of the toughest challenges was to sift the mountain of raw data they were receiving about potential suspects to work out where he or she was likely to strike next. There was no time simply to rely on a hunch - so instead they turned to a fascinating piece of software to build a "geographic profile" of the killer.
The program was developed by Kim Rosso, a former Canadian police detective who realised that a serial killer balances a desire to remain in familiar territory with a need to travel just far enough to avoid being recognised.
By building a mathematical pattern of his probable future movements, Rosso claimed, the software could succeed where thousands of police man-hours had failed.
The Java-based software, marketed as Rigel by a Vancouver company, had worked before. In Britain it helped to solve a sexual assault in Leeds four years ago, and later a series of bank robberies in the Midlands; it has also been used by police forces in Canada and the US. Behind it lies a technique known as "geo-profiling" which, Rosso says, builds on the link between the physical place in which a crime occurred and the known propensities of serial criminals for choosing their victims and locations.
Detectives feed into the software the geographical co-ordinates of the known crime areas, adding details of the crimes and their list of suspects. Using mathematical algorithms, Rigel then weighs up the chances of the crimes being linked, and prioritises suspects according to the data. Detectives can then see the results on screen as a contoured two or three-dimensional map which can help them to work out where the offender may be based.
By itself, the software cannot solve a crime. But detectives who use it say that it helps to narrow their suspect list as effectively as psychological profiling - even if its use might make a less exciting movie out of a case such as the one dominating Washington.
++++
AND NOW some news I really ought to have brought you back in the last century: the number of British homes and businesses with broadband internet connections has, in the past week, finally hit a million.
It has been an excruciatingly slow journey towards broadband Britain, not helped in the least by the repeated reluctance of Oftel, the telecoms regulator, to challenge BT's self- interested delays in opening up its infrastructure. Rather cheekily, Oftel is claiming the credit for creating "the most competitive broadband market in Europe" - in particular, by "encouraging" BT to cut the wholesale price of its digital subscriber line (DSL) connections last spring to £14.75 a month. Almost instantly, this led to a doubling of demand to 8,000 new installations a week, which makes one wonder why Oftel had not thought of it earlier. Since then, the figure has risen to 20,000 a week.
There are now more than 100 broadband internet service providers competing for your business - and as a result prices are falling sharply. AOL recently cut its monthly fee from £35 to £28, and Tiscali has just launched a medium-speed service for less than £20. One ISP, Gio Internet, has gone as low as £18, including VAT, a suspiciously cheap sum for a viable long term business. Before making your decision, study the findings posted on an independent website such as adslguide.org.uk, as well as the customer complaints charted on other sites with names such as a "BTopenwoe" and "NTHellWorld". A reliable service is more important than price. And for those of you living in the four homes in ten still not served by DSL connections, I can only suggest that you ask Oftel why it's taking BT so long to hook you up.
(The Times, October 15 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, October 15, 2002
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