Location Based Services and Crime Detection Alert

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, many issues and trend of crimes such as robbery, drug addicts, rape, murder or snatch had arisen via the whole world. These arise of crimes was happening shows that the public especially victims seek for a proper assistance in the soonest time from emergency agencies such as police, fire fighter or hospital. To overcome those crimes a lot of effort and works had been done with many countries everywhere in the world with their goal to be a less crime country. One of a good solution through the launch of the emergency centre channel by phone number like 999 hotline number was used in Malaysia. By phone, the operator has been recorded the all information required such as location and type of emergency (Widiasa Wijaya, 2013). Then, the operator will channelling the line to the respected agencies based on the caller’s problem faced but if it identify as a prank call, the line will not proceed to related agencies.

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This is a common flow for the emergency call centre. The crime is solved based on the information provided and how fast the information delivered to the agencies targeted such as, a police officer who are on duty will be alerted from the provided information and have to move right away to the reported location. The major aspect for instant assistance not be able to reach at soonest time when the distance between the incident occur and the emergency agencies. Whereby via the emergency phone line, 45% robbery incidents reports used in England and Wales.(Michael Ovelgonne, 2010)

The advancement in development of wireless communications and mobile database technology has provide a greatly convenience for lives nowadays and has promote the usage of cell phone. Therefore the extensive to application of Location Based Services (LBSs) for emergency handling has played an important role in deal with public emergencies and as a value-add to the 999 service. The implementation and the prototype development of Emergency Information Retrieval by using LBSs as a mobile application is hoped that will be able to solve the real distress problem.

1.1 Problem Statement

All distress call will be channelled to a centralised unit called “cell centre”. The call center operator are working within 24 hours based on rotating shift duty. The operator have to be working routine like administrative works such as reporting the calls and then channeling the information throughout respective division. The existing emergency system quite primitive without having proper tools like digital map, mobile communication. The only communication between the call center and the emergency agencies is via walkie-talkie or radio based communication.

According to (Peter Kolesar I, Albert Pedrinan & Peter Stein B, 1976), mentioned that a lot of focus has been done on the calculation or timeframe been taken while operator on the line, call routing and call queues. The researcher focus on simplifying the flow of emergencies information flow by utilizing the usage of pull location based service. They also mentioned that the answering process during the line is busy are not on FIFO basis at that time. Therefore, if the use of location based service is utilized, the call centre operator for 999 which handled fully by Telekom Malaysia can automatically store into database. The proposed project will be targeted user like police and RSS feed and pull location based service technology will be used to retrieved information.

Another constraint that faced in the emergency call workflow due to the current system are using that being used manually. This condition have been given impact when there is a few number of operator duty able to receive calls in certain reach peak hour and also involving much of wasting time while on run. If the line is busy, for those who is the callers that need for help would have to wait on the line and this waiting can turn into problem for them. It is because their information or help that they need does not arrive on that time. Perhaps, the criminal suspect can escape in that wasted time and this situation causes a lot of criminal may leave free of charge without any punished. The statistics of crimes that unsolved will increase continually. Sometimes the delivered information is not clear during the calls arrive for call centre system is being recorded. This can cause a misunderstandings between the operator for the emergency centre site and the call centre.

Based on the Figure 1.1 below, the viewer may see the current flow of call handling that able to explain on the 999 call flow. Once the This figure was taken from on Project Director MERS999 (Ir Rozinah Anas, 2008). The research is on Bridging Public And Agencies For Disaster & Emergency Situations under Telekom Malaysia (TM). She had already stated that once the 999 Response Center was handle by TM Call Center get the emergency details, the information then will be transmitted through making calls to related agencies like police, fire department, ambulance and civil defense based on the emergency type.

Figure 1.1 : The 999 Call Flow for the MERS999 which Handle by TM in Malaysia (Ir Rozinah Anas, 2008)

As stated by (Dr Rosidah Ibrahim, 2010), the current emergency call flow was happen to have no automatic routing system, high in drop call, long queue, abandon call and no access during call congestion and this will lead to a very low public confidence.

By having the use of pull location based service, the flow of information is smooth as the call centre agents of 999 will just need to insert data to the database and later the information can be retrieved by using the smart phone. Time taken can also be reduced as there is no need to channel information manually.

Concerning the problems discuss, this is should not be happening in Malaysia as a country that in moving towards technological oriented in terms of works and service delivery. The improves quality of life, must be enhanced the current emergency caling system to counter every possibility. Furthermore, the public citizen also need to play a major role to ensure that the country is a safe place for others. By the implementation of Emergency Information Retrieval by using local based services and through its prototype development it is hoped that it will be able to solve the real life problem.

1.2 Research Questions

The main research questions for this study are given as follows:

1. How to investigate the design considerations in providing location based services for emergency cases?
2. How to design and develop a push location based service based on the requirement acquired?
3. How to design a pull location based service based on the requirement acquired earlier?

1.3 Research Objectives

Generally, the majority of the research objectives is to give facility who is use this project after ready to publish in the market. The purpose of this study to be achieved is to develop the web based and the mobile application related to location based services and crime detection alert. The objectives are as follows :

1. To investigate design considerations in providing location based services for crime and emergency cases.
2. To design and develop a pull location based service based on the requirement acquired.
3. To design a push location based service based on the requirement acquired.

1.4 Scope of the Study

The scope of the study is the boundaries, constraints or limitations of the project want to develop. This research is based on the current workflow of 999 call centre after receiving emergency calling and channelled the emergency information in connection with the related agencies.

i) Scope of Target Users

The prototype of research tried to use and implement for police officer.

ii) Scope of Project Requirement

The project requirement will be divide into three categories there are hardware, software and programming language that will used as shown in Table 1.1, Table 1.2 and Table 1.3 below.

Table 1.1: Description of Software Requirement

Table 1.2: Description of Hardware Requirement

Table 1.3: Description of Programming Language Requirement

iii) Scope of System Module

The distress information such as current location will be collected in the earlier phase is transformed into services for mobile smart phones that used by police officer who are on patrol will be alerted from the provided information and have to move right away to the reported location.

iv) Scope of Network System

Location Based Services will be the main focus on this research will be apply on GPRS transmission.

1.5 Significance of the Study

1. It enables to contribute to the flow of working and alert for the crime detection. Furthermore, it is hoped can increase the way of information is managed and collected.

2. It enables to solve problems that might be face daily since the development of the prototype can be a starting point for a mobile application. It is hoped that this application may contribute to standard architecture on other mobile location based services for solving other problems.

3. It enables the analyst to increase their management on getting information for criminal behaviour and factors that involving them for such situation since the new system will hold the push location data and caller information in one database. With the geographic data also, the analyst can study which area are mostly have criminal or emergency activities. That will be much helpful for police officer to monitor in connection with area while reducing the growth of criminal activities within that surroundings.

4. Contributes to further development of facilities, guidelines to improve the current situation in helping the emergency line flow and alert on the way to emergency messages reached towards police officer.

1.6 Limitation of the Study

There are certain limitations that have to be faced by the researcher while completing this project. The main limition of the study is the time and transportation constraints make the researcher impossible to do formal procedure in order to get information regarding call flow handling process from police department and Telekom Malaysia. There are some restricted info hidden which related to the call handling process and need for the formal procedure in order to get the requirement. There are some restricted info hidden which related to the call handling process and need higher authoritative person to involve for getting the information which hidden earlier to public people. Therefore, the data set information of crime and emergency statistic cannot be collected due to this.

1.7 Definition of Terms

1.7.1 Enabling Mobile Location Based Service

A service on information or entertainment which delivered to customer or user portability based on their handheld access.

1.7.2 Emergency Information for

An emergency is a situation that poses an immediate threat to human life or serious damage to property and is acknowledged to the recipient.

1.7.3 Police Cases

Cases that involving police issues.

1.8 Expected Result

After the completion, the researcher have expected to produce the web based application and another one is the mobile application development for smartphone to emergency report. Figure 1.1 shows the proposed workflow for application developed in this research by using pull Location Based Service.

Figure 1.1 : Pull Location Based Service Architecture for current findings

1.9 Conclusion

This chapter describes the overview of the study that will be developed. The topics covered in this chapter includes the introduction of the current emergency call system, objectives of the study, the problems that facing with the current system and the scope of the research. The purpose of this study has been set to solve the current issue cause of creating mobile location based application that able to give information for target user on crime and emergencies cases.

In the next chapter is Literature Review which study will be conducted with review of related literatures from journals, thesis articles, and books regarding location based services and previous research of emergency information retrieval.

WIDIASA WIJAYA, B. S., HATMA SURYOTRISONGKO,FEBRILIYAN SAMOPA, NISFU ASRUL SANI 2013. Developing Android-Based Personal Emergency Notification

System with Global Positioning System as an Alternative

Handling for Public Safety

Information Systems International Conference (ISICO), 624 -630.

MICHAEL OVELGONNE, A. C. S., ANDREAS GEYER-SCHULZ 2010. Social Emergency Alert Service – A Location-Based Privacy-Aware Personal Safety Service. IEEE Computer Society, 84 – 89.