CASPER: Computer Assisted Search Prioritisation and Environmental Response Application

Missing person cases consume time and effort on what are already over-stretched Police resources. Across the UK Police forces have to deal with approximately 1000 enquiries a day relating to missing persons. Current approaches are inherently manual and rely on Police domain knowledge to relate a missing person's behavior to the surrounding geography and terrain. Searches are highly probabilistic, based on a missing person's profile, mental and spatial behavior patterns. Computer support is available, but this is largely in the form of data entry and database systems. This paper describes the CASPER system which is a software application to provide computational support for missing person cases. The CASPER system is essentially a database fronted by a Google Map application. Its strengths lie in the richness of the data and the degree of interaction and information provided through the Map application to enable 'what-if' search scenarios to be elaborated. The paper describes our on-going development of the CASPER system using missing person/suicide data for the Merseyside region in the UK.