53 Keeping Communities Safe data-sharing for location intelligence. What’s known as Crime Atlas Austria uses an enterprise GIS to map all crimes committed anywhere in the nation’s nine federated states. Whenever a new crime is reported to the police, the data is added to the Crime Atlas within one hour, making it available to the rest of the agency. Identifying Hot Spots and Trends The atlas, maintained by Criminal Intelligence Service Austria (Bundeskriminalamt, or BK), the nation’s central police agency, has been online for two years. Historical crime data within the map helps police understand long-term trends. The visualization of current crime data helps them identify developing crime hot spots and see hidden relationships in the data. “The Crime Atlas really has a specific purpose,” said Jacques Huberty, BK’s head of spatial analysis. “It should support investigations, and it should support prevention.” Every day, federal and local police find constructive ways to use the Crime Atlas. In summer 2024, Vienna was rocked by gang violence when youth gangs with roots in Chechnya battled gangs of Syrians. The map clearly shows these violent crimes committed in parks and train stations. Criteria for the Crime Atlas Burglaries are perhaps the best way to grasp how the Crime Atlas is changing policing in Austria. Hot spots are quickly identified, especially in this area of crime, and measures such as patrols and prevention can be carried out quickly and in a geographically targeted manner. Say you want to see where the acid burglaries have occurred. Huberty pulled up the basemap of Austria. “You just type in ‘acid,’” Huberty demonstrated, as a series of dots appeared on the map. “There you have the whole series for all of Austria.” Beyond acid burglary updates, the atlas was designed to make accurate data accessible to the nation’s 30,000 police and detectives in different police departments. “We had three criteria,” said Horst Schabauer, a spatial crime analyst at BK. “The first was usability—nobody should need a handbook. The second was that the data had to be good. And the third was that everyone should see everything, all of Austria.” Everything police do “can be encompassed by this platform,” Huberty added. “The investigators, prevention people, everyone can go to this platform to have all the daily information.” Changing How Police Investigate Crime Complete access to crime data has had important implications for how crimes are investigated in Austria. Huberty zoomed in on an area that showed where Vienna borders the state of Lower Austria to the south. (Vienna is both a city and its own state.) Dots in various colors appeared on the screen, on both sides of the border. “Those orange dots are burglaries into cars,” Huberty said. “The different colors symbolize a selection of the most The Criminal Intelligence Service Austria (Bundeskriminalamt or BK), the nation’s central police agency has its headquarters in Vienna where it analyzes crime trends and serves as a national and international contact for police cooperation.
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