Abstract
Gun violence continues to be a staggering and seemingly intractable issue in many communities. The prevalence of gun violence among the sub-population of individuals under court-ordered community supervision provides an opportunity for intervention using remote monitoring technology. Existing monitoring systems rely heavily on location-based monitoring methods, which have incomplete geographic coverage and do not provide information on illegal firearm use. This paper presents the first results demonstrating the feasibility of using wearable inertial sensors to recognize wrist movements and other signals corresponding to firearm usage. Data were collected from accelerometers worn on the wrists of subjects shooting a number of different firearms, conducting routine daily activities, and participating in activities and tasks that could be potentially confused with firearm discharges. A training sample was used to construct a combined detector and classifier for individual gunshots, which achieved a classification accuracy of 99.4 percent when tested against a hold-out sample of observations. These results suggest the feasibility of using inexpensive wearable sensors to detect firearm discharges.
Highlights
Gun violence remains a persistent problem in U.S communities [1]
While the scale of this problem suggests the need for a range of policy responses, the present analysis suggests that an opportunity exists for advanced offender monitoring technology, using low-cost wearable sensors, to enhance public safety by detecting illegal firearm usage by individuals already under the supervision of the criminal justice system
Consistent with recent advances in human activity recognition [11,12,16], the present study investigated the possibility that firearm use could be reliably distinguished from routine human activities and from known confusable activities using microelectromechanical systems (MEMs) inertial sensor technology
Summary
Gun violence remains a persistent problem in U.S communities [1]. Each year, nearly 10,000 individuals are murdered with firearms [2]. A number of jurisdictions have turned to technological solutions, such as citywide acoustical gunshot location systems, hoping these systems could enhance their ability to detect or deter gun offenders. These systems have not yet proven to be effective at reducing outdoor gun violence and, by design, are unable to locate indoor gun use [3]. Other jurisdictions have focused their enforcement efforts on monitoring the subset of individuals at highest risk of involvement in fatal shootings based on research showing that the majority of both homicide victims and perpetrators are on probation, parole, or pretrial release [4,5,6]. While the scale of this problem suggests the need for a range of policy responses, the present analysis suggests that an opportunity exists for advanced offender monitoring technology, using low-cost wearable sensors, to enhance public safety by detecting illegal firearm usage by individuals already under the supervision of the criminal justice system
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