Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Eight or nine years back we attended one of the first Crime Mapping conferences sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and found it to be one of the most creative and practical events of this type. (We also have very high regard for the ESRI Users Conference and the Special Libraries Assoc. meetings.) So we want to be sure to let all analytic journos know about next year's Crime Mapping confab, scheduled for March 28 to 31, 2007 in Pittsburg, Penn. Here's part of the official call for papers:
The Mapping & Analysis for Public Safety Program announces it's Call for Papers for the Ninth Crime Mapping Research Conference in Pittsburgh, PA at the Omni William Penn Hotel, March 28 to 31, 2007. The deadline for submission is Friday, September 29th.... The theme of this conference will be Spatial Approaches to Understanding Crime & Demographics. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data analysis techniques have become prominent tools for analyzing criminal behavior and the impacts of the criminal justice system on society. Classical and spatial statistics have been merged to form more comprehensive approaches in understanding social problems from research and practical standpoints. These methods allow for the measurement of proximity effects on places by neighboring areas that lead to a multi-dimensional and less static understanding of factors that contribute to or repel crime across space.The 9th Crime Mapping Research Conference will be about demonstrating the use and development of methodologies for practitioners and researchers. The MAPS Program is anticipating the selection of key accepted presentations for further development of an electronic monograph on GIS, Spatial Data Analysis and the Study of Crime in the following year. Its purpose will be to demonstrate the fusing of classical and spatial analysis techniques to enhance policy decisions. Methods should not be limited to the use of classical and spatial statistics but also demonstrate the unique capabilities of GIS in preparing, categorizing and visualization data for analysis....
For more, see: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/
A helpful piece posted today on LLRX.com reminding us that just throwing what we think might be appropriate keywords into a search engine isn't the mostsensible research strategy. While you might find that the title of the articleis not exactly what it is about, the content is helpful. Here are the main points:
“It's Not Rocket Science: Making Sense of Scientific Evidence,” by Paul Barronhttp://www.llrx.com/features/scientificevidence.htm
An interesting piece in the NYTimes on Sunday, “Finding Tax Revenue Through Aerial Imaging,” highlights yet another industry and example of how public administrators are using GIS, in this case to increase the revenue stream. We think that if journalists are not hip to these tools, then they cannot ask the right questions of the public's administrators.
Once a year, Pictometry flies a Cessna 172 over Philadelphia, taking thousands of black-and-white photographs. The low-altitude shots, unlike satellite images, show buildings at about a 40-degree angle. Pictometry’s computers organize the photos so they can be searched by address. Nearly 200 employees in Mr. Mescolotto’s office have the software on their computers.
Pictometry isn’t the only company offering aerial photos to assessors, but it has won adherents in more than 200 cities and counties, according to Dante Pennacchia, Pictometry’s chief marketing officer. Its competitors include an Israeli company, Ofek International, working with Aerial Cartographics of America, based in Orlando, Fla….”http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/realestate/20nati.html
Least any of us think that Social Network Analysis is something new, please take the time to read this wonderful, albeit personal, history of the field. Edward O. Laumann, of the University of Chicago, has been swimming in these waters for more than 40 years. His address to the International Network of Social Network Analysis, 26th Annual Sunbelt Conference in Vancouver, Canada, April 2006, tells much about how we have arrived at the current level of SNASee “A 45-Year Retrospective of Doing Networks”http://www.insna.org/Connections-Web/Volume27-1/8.Laumann.pdf
Pete Weiss sends the following helpful tip to the CARR-L listserv:
Abstracted from Genie Tyburski's TVC-Alert list:
Use the search box above to query our database of resources for finding legal or factual information or information about companies or people. Use the site search engine to expand your query to other resources available on The Virtual Chase.
Company Information Guide – find annotated resources for conducting company research
People Finder Guide – find annotated resources for conducting people research
Legal Research Guide – find annotated resources for finding legal or factual information
Regular readers know that the IAJ has long been interested in the quality of the data in public records databases. The NY Times of 12 July 2006 carries a front-page story by Eric Lipton on just how bad the data is in the “National Asset Database.” As Lipton's story points out:
“The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation….
“But the audit says that lower-level department officials agreed that some older information in the inventory “was of low quality and that they had little faith in it.
“The presence of large numbers of out-of-place assets taints the credibility of the data,” the report says.”
Sigh. This is not a new problem, or even one that we can hang on the Bush Administration. It started with the Clinton Administration in 1998. “In 1998, President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive No. 63 (PDD-63), Critical Infrastructure Protection, which set forth principles for protecting the nation by minimizing the threat of smaller-scale terrorist attacks against information technology and geographically-distributed supply chains that could cascade and disrupt entire sectors of the economy.” [Source here.]
Link to the PDF of the Inspector General's Report at http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20060711_DHS.pdf
Many of us have long-recognized that a top-flight team of news researchers is the marrow of any good news operation. So it is that we point you to a recent column in The Washington Post.
The Post's Unsung Sleuths
By Deborah HowellSunday, July 2, 2006; B06
The reporting that appears in The Post is supported by an infrastructure of research that readers do not see, except as credited in the occasional tag line at the end of a story.
Those tag lines don't begin to acknowledge the work done for reporters and readers by the News Research Center. The musty newspaper morgue of lore, brimming with crumbling clippings in tidy little envelopes, is now full of computers and researchers that Post journalists can't live without. Yes, there's still paper — about 7,500 books, 30 periodicals a month and 15 daily newspapers.
Center director Bridget Roeber said the researchers are “news junkies, who see themselves not just as librarians but journalists finding and analyzing original documents, tracking people down, finding leads, using obscure databases.” [more]
“The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers<http://www.slate.com/id/2144508/ >This article serves as a valuable reminder that we should viewall statistics, no matter how frequently they are used inpublic arguments, with skepticism until we know who producedthem and how they were derived.” From: Neat New Stuff I Found This Week <http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html> Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2006.
Steve Bass, a PC World columnist, had an item this week that reminds us that a good analytic journalist is always thinking about what is NOT in the data. He writes:
Risky Business: Stealth Surfing at Work
Not long after I told my buddy about Anonymizer, I heard from another friend, an IT director for a fairly large company. It may not be such a good idea to surf anonymously at the office:
“I recently had an employee, an MIS employee at that, fired. He was using Anonymizer at work. We have a tracking system (Web Inspector) and I kept noticing that he was leaving no tracks.
“I consulted with my supervisor and he decided that I should analyze the employee's system. I found footprints, hacking, and a batch file he used to delete all Internet traces. So I sent the system off to forensics and they found all the bits, each and every one. We're now in legal limbo. The employee is being fired, not for the hacking or the batch file, but for using the Anonymizer.
“Thought maybe you'd be interested in hearing about the dangers of using the Anonymizer in the workplace. They claim the Anonymizer hides your tracks at work–but I guess not all of them.”
–Name Withheld, Network and Computer Systems Administrator
I asked George Siegel, my network guru, what he thought. Here's what he said: “It's interesting to note how the user was initially discovered — by the absence of anything incriminating. Network professionals have logs showing just about everything that goes on and they look for any deviation from the norm. I can always tell who is up to no good… their computers are scrupulously clean.“
We're pulling together the final pieces following the Ver 1.0 workshop in Santa Fe last week. Twenty journalists, social scientists, computer scientists, educators, public administrators and GIS specialists met in Santa Fe April 9-12 to consider the question, “How can we verify data in public records databases?”
The papers, PowerPoint slides and some initial results of three breakout groups are now posted for the public on the Ver1point0 group site at Yahoo. Check it out.
