Cops in Toronto catch a criminal through GIS plotting, and reporter Sara Barbour takes us on a tour of other unusual new applications of GIS.
"At 10:30 one morning in late 2006, two police officers in the city of Toronto parked several blocks away from a nearby school. To passers-by, the police car appeared to have stopped at random; in fact, the pair's location was carefully planned based on months' worth of data. When a white van passed less than half an hour later, the officers cautiously followed it before signaling the driver to pull over.
By 11:03 a.m., the driver - a sex offender who had been harassing children in the area for more than a year - was under arrest.
For Manny San Pedro, detective constable and geographic profiling analyst for the Toronto Police, the 33-minute capture is the perfect case to demonstrate how geographic information systems (GIS) are putting officers in a position to solve crime - and just one example of how spatial thinking is changing the way we work today."
Read the full story: GIS: Cops Favor New Kind of Plotting
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Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS)
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
City of Cambridge
Montrose County
The Pocatello Development Authority