Facilitating information sharing among law enforcement agencies: improving the geospatial repository for analysis and safety planning

The primary barrier to comprehensive crime analysis in United States is a lack of information sharing between law enforcement agencies. A particularly egregious form of this problem is the failure to share spatial data. This situation prevents geographically and functionally connected agencies from performing cross jurisdictional analysis. The Department of Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia is working in partnership with the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to create a solution to this problem; the geospatial repository for analysis and safety planning (GRASP). GRASP is a Web application that serves as an online spatial data repository and utilizes geographic information system (GIS) technology to facilitate data sharing among law enforcement agencies. The system provides verified users the ability to view and share spatial data over the Internet in a secure environment. Since its inception, the GRASP system has gone through many changes in design and functionality. This year, the focus was on evolving from a previously centralized system to a distributed design architecture. The team modified the system to be distributable by installation CD-ROM. Furthermore, the capstone team replaced the previous proprietary translation software with an open source software to eliminate any licensing fees associated with adoption of GRASP. In addition, security options for GRASP users were added. The product of this year's work is a largely nonproprietary, decentralized GRASP system, modified to be distributed by installation CD to law enforcement agencies around the country.