Mapping and monitoring suburban crimes using high resolution data
O M Murali, R Pari WTI Advanced Technology Ltd, 98 Peters Road, Chennai 600 086 Tel: 91-44-8260178/8214442 Fax: 91-44-8272876 Email: wtiatl@eth.net, murali_om@hotmail.com
1. Introduction Last year at suburban Anna Nagar in Chennai, the production and illegal distribution of pornography related activities was flashed across and upsetting the general public. The surprising fact was that the person himself was a prominent doctor who was heading this operation and sending to foreign countries. Such illegal activities were going on for quite long time without any trace or notice even to the neighbouring houses because that independent house was actually serving the patients and registered as clinic. In yet another incident, at suburban Tambaram Sanatorium, a house was looted by criminals who forcibly entered at midnight breaking the doors and escaped without trace with jewels and money worth around a lakh. The victims were unaware of this, sleeping in the adjacent room. In this looting case, the jewels were brought home just a day before from the bank locker to the house for a function, and this indicated that the victim was being closely monitored by criminals prior to the attempt. These were few incidences, particularly happening in suburban parts of Chennai where houses of independent nature, depending upon the duration of day and night time lock, presence of aged people and other related social factors make the houses ideal hunting ground (suburban) for the notorious criminals who show their hands at frequent intervals across these vast areas of suburban Chennai. Keeping this in mind, this attempt has been made to highlight the potential application of high-resolution data in mapping and monitoring the crimes taking place in suburban parts of the major cities of India. This in turn, help periodically monitor the status of individual houses to increase security personnel at vulnerable locations and to long locked houses, and help to initiate community participation which is the key to check such incidences. 2. Methodology In order to understand the suburban geography and the occurrence of crimes, initially, the complete Chennai city was captured with different areas. Prominent areas have been delineated with other areas merged with the existing well known areas. Data obtained from various sources have been used to populate the polygons and from that it was found that the suburban areas came under the grip of criminals for various crimes like robbery, theft, loot, murder, etc. It was also noticed that the primary areas frequented by criminals include Velachery, Tambaram, Pallavaram, Chrompet, Pammal, Madippakkam, Nanganallur, Ennore, Anna Nagar, Vyasarpadi, Thiruvottiyur, Pulianthope, Madhavaram, Manali, Avadi, Adampakkam and Ambattur. Interestingly, these areas fall under suburban category in Chennai as shown in the Figure 1 in blue color (dark color). Of these areas, few of them are industrial belts. Many social and geographical reasons have been responsible for such increasing crimes in Chennai and other major metros of India. Changing lifestyles, migration from nearby villages and towns to major cities in search of prosperity, poor standard of living, unemployment, poverty, declining joint family system, cheap availability of land in suburban areas, etc. directly or indirectly reflect in terms of increasing crimes.  Figure 1 shows suburban crime prone areas shown in Blue (dark color) in Chennai This simple mapping of suburban areas have not helped in better understanding the trend owing to the shifting methods adopted by the criminals. Also, they started targeting houses, which remain locked during day or night or occupied by aged people. These incidences across the suburban Chennai helped to focus our attention to high-resolution data which alone raised the hope of mapping and monitoring individual houses at greater details with possible solution.
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