Visualization Technology will Help Police Process Complex Data

Visualization Technology will Help Police Process Complex Data

visualization technology

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Microsoft is incorporating a visualization technology to help UK police forces react and record incidents more effectively. Microsoft Services chose Cambridge Intelligence (CI)’s KeyLines technology after a global beauty parade of potential solutions.

According to CI’s site, KeyLines management platform, with Microsoft Dynamics, help connect and utilize existing data to help provide information with real-time context to identify threat, risk and harm.

With the initial rollout due in mid-2017, Microsoft is working with two UK forces as others are expected to come on board once the platform has proved itself.

Until now, call handlers had to work with technologies that stored the information in different systems and rely on out-dated desktop tools. This slowed processes and inhibited a self-service approach to information retrieval.

Huw Edmunds, solution architect at Microsoft Services, explained: “Contact Centre teams need to quickly find and understand a lot of contextual data. They don’t have time to look through long lists of information and historical records. This is an excellent way to bring out all of that relevant information at the right time.”

He added: “We examined several other options. KeyLines was chosen because it provided the level of support and documentation we needed to build network visualization into the Contact Centre solution. It also had the best performance and the right combination of features to provide that intuitive access to data our users needed.”

As reported on Business Weekly, Microsoft has now engaged with other police forces in the UK who are interested in using the system.

The partners also plan to extend the system beyond its current scope to use the technology in other methods as well.

Some of the applications of CI’s visualization solutions include, according to the company’s website:

For security and intelligence – Link analysis and network visualization distils key intelligence from complex connected data, for quick and clear insight. An analyst’s role is to understand and effectively communicate threat information to decision makers at all levels. Having access to tools such as KeyLines to visualize relationships and see patterns in data is an important component to the success of missions.

KeyLines has been deployed for military and defense data visualization to help meet one of the biggest challenges in the field: to acquire, analyze and present critical intelligence on the enemy.

A KeyLines chart provides a concise and interactive format for communicating complex connected data in an easy to digest format. Critical intelligence can be readily depicted in a network format, including the lawful interception of communications data, terror cell network structures, the flow of enemy finances, military unit / resource and logistical data.

For law enforcement – The ability to find and prove incriminating links is at the heart of every successful police investigation and prosecution. KeyLines can be used to build interactive charts of people, events and connections as part of an investigation. These charts can be collaborative, helping police staff to find and understand new routes of enquiry and combine all knowledge into one central resource.

Understanding the social structure of criminal gangs and terrorist cells and their internal dynamics is essential for combating them. Without that knowledge, law enforcement agencies cannot know for certain if their surveillance operations are focussing on the ringleaders or just outlying players. KeyLines can be used to visualize vast amounts of communications data – such as telephone, email or social network records – through time.

The technology also has civilian applications, including understanding business intelligence involving complex and connected data, helping pharmaceutical companies combine their data management and discovery activities, understanding social networks in order to find influential people, anticipate peaks in demand for products or services, generate more targeted marketing approaches and predict illegal activity.