Data Mining and Predictive Analysis

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Public Safety–Specific Evaluation

One question that comes up with increasing frequency is: How effective is a particular deployment strategy or operational plan at reducing crime? What works? More and more, funding agencies, government organizations, even citizen groups are expecting outcome information demonstrating the efficacy of a particular crime fighting or prevention program. This is particularly true with novel, innovative, or costly approaches. And, in many cases, the challenge involves the documentation of the absence of crime. So, if nothing happened, how do we show that nothing happened? The same creativity and domain expertise necessary for the use of data mining and predictive analytics in operational planning can be a huge asset ...