DESIGNING DATA WAREHOUSES TO SUPPORT CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

Abstract

The lack of well designed knowledge management systems in the intensive and time critical law enforcement environment poses interesting problems for information technology professionals. The objective of this paper is to study how the different databases at the Police Department of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico can be integrated. We propose the creation of a data warehouse to store relevant criminal data that will be helpful in crime prevention, locating criminals and finally bring them to justice. The Criminal Information Support System (CISS) project includes the integration of multiple systems having different functionalities. CISS is a cost-efficient web-based system that will enable the law enforcement departments to share information from different data sources. We present a descriptive study of a proposed data warehouse system that aims to improve the criminal data management in different ways such as developing effective plans for crime prevention, finding useful criminal behaviour patterns, and making correlations between similar circumstances to solve difficult cases successfully and to avoid further casualties. We recommend a structure that integrates the different data sources of the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) that can be used to share real-time information through the Internet and the Intranet of law enforcement agencies within the island and the United States. This is the first stage of a larger project that includes online analytical processing (OLAP) tools well suited for advanced extractions and a decision support system.