Making predictions with Big Data

At first glance, the letter from the Delhi police commissioner's desk could have easily been dismissed as another routine laundry list of his department's "achievements" in the previous year. A closer look at the letter, written a little over two years ago, would have sprung a pleasant surprise in the context of the city police's technology prowess. The Delhi Police, according to the letter, had partnered with the Indian Space Research Organisation to implement CMAPS--Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System--under the "Effective use of Space Technology-based Tools for Internal Security Scheme" initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. CMAPS generates crime-reporting queries and has the capacity to identify crime hotspots by auto sweep on the Dial 100 database every 1-3 minutes, replacing a Delhi Police crime-mapping tool that involved manual gathering of data every 15 days. It performs trend analysis, compiles crime and criminal profiles and analyses the behaviour of suspected offenders--all with accompanying graphics.