Author Archives: Simsi Team

KCPD Improves Police Operations and Public Safety with Risk Terrain Modeling

Congratulations to the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department (KCPD) for receiving the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) 2022 Leadership in Law Enforcement Research Award. This award recognizes agencies that demonstrate excellence in conducting and using research to improve … Read More

Workshops are Hot Spots for Learning About Crime Prevention and Public Safety

Crime and violence are top priorities for many cities across the United States. Adequately addressing these issues in a way that meets local expectations can be challenging. Police can’t do it alone. Simsi’s Crime Prevention with Risk Terrain Modeling workshop … Read More

Risk Narratives

Risk narratives convey the contexts and opportunities for crime at particular places and times. A risk narrative is like a story about how crime incidents connect to places. It accounts for how people interact at and around particular places to … Read More

Data-Informed Community Engagement

The Newark Public Safety Collaborative (NPSC) does data-informed community engagement (DICE) really well. The NPSC prioritizes crime problems with guidance from its community partners. They use RTMDx software to diagnose crime patterns and connect geographic features with crime events. Then … Read More

Safeguard Against Bias in Big Data

The growing use of ‘big data’ and analytics by police departments is often equated with over-policing or increased law enforcement at crime hot spots. In contrast, problem-solving with risk terrain modeling (RTM) can be data-informed, transparent and civilly just. RTM … Read More

RTM is not Predictive Policing

Risk terrain modeling (RTM) is a diagnostic tool for crime prevention, it’s not a predictive algorithm. The only true measure of successful predictions is for crimes to occur where predicted, which is not in the public’s best interest. Predictive policing … Read More

What is Risk Terrain Modeling?

Risk terrain modeling (RTM) is risk assessment for places. It’s a data analysis technique. And, it’s a diagnostic tool. When used for crime analysis, RTM identifies environmental conditions that contribute to crime problems. Different crime incident locations can have common … Read More