Tools
Geographic profiling is an investigative tool that can be seen as a strategic information management system to assist police with the large volume of information throughout an investigation. It concentrates its focus on the geographic aspects of the crime and was developed in response to the demands of solving serial crimes. In response, Rossmo developed a computerized geographic profiling algorithm called criminal geographic targeting (CGT) which assess the spatial characteristics of crimes. It analyzes the geographic coordinates of the offender’s crimes and produces a color map which assigns probabilities to different points for the most likely area of the offender’s home base.
Further tools employed by geographic profilers include specialized software systems, such as Rigel, CrimeStat or Gemini. Similarly, system inputs are crime location addresses or coordinates, often entered through a geographic information system (GIS). Output is a jeopardy surface (three-dimensional probability surface) or color geoprofile, which depicts the most likely areas of offender residence or search base. These programs assist crime analysts and investigators to focus their resources more effectively by highlighting the crucial geographic areas.
Read more about this topic: Geographic Profiling
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