Articles

Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)

Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) analysis brings the crime and land-use components of CPTED together with an empirical twist. Physical landscapes consciously and unconsciously influence human behaviors. Altering the physical design of landscapes is a main goal of CPTED. RTM identifies … Read More

Business, Security and Asset Protection

Expert opinions are more valuable when forged from defensible analytics. Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) analysis is peer-reviewed and scientifically proven to yield actionable insights for crime risk assessments and forecasting. RTM connects crime issues with environmental features and delivers reports that … Read More

Risk-Based Policing

Risk-Based Policing (RBP) uses Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) to deploy resources at priority places with detailed information about what to focus on when they get there. It diagnoses crime hot spots and fixes them. And, it prevents crime by focusing … 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