Formally analysing the concepts of domestic violence

  • Authors:
  • Jonas Poelmans;Paul Elzinga;Stijn Viaene;Guido Dedene

  • Affiliations:
  • K.U. Leuven, Faculty of Business and Economics, Naamsestraat 69, 3000 Leuven, Belgium;Amsterdam-Amstelland Police, James Wattstraat 84, 1000 CG Amsterdam, The Netherlands;K.U. Leuven, Faculty of Business and Economics, Naamsestraat 69, 3000 Leuven, Belgium and Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Vlamingenstraat 83, 3000 Leuven, Belgium;K.U. Leuven, Faculty of Business and Economics, Naamsestraat 69, 3000 Leuven, Belgium and Universiteit van Amsterdam Business School, Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

The types of police inquiries performed these days are incredibly diverse. Often data processing architectures are not suited to cope with this diversity since most of the case data is still stored as unstructured text. In this paper Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is showcased for its exploratory data analysis capabilities in discovering domestic violence intelligence from a dataset of unstructured police reports filed with the Amsterdam-Amstelland police in the Netherlands. From this data analysis it is shown that FCA can be a powerful instrument to operationally improve policing practice. For one, it is shown that the definition of domestic violence employed by the police is not always as clear as it should be, making it hard to use it effectively for classification purposes. In addition, this paper presents newly discovered knowledge for automatically classifying certain cases as either domestic or non-domestic violence. Moreover, it provides practical advice for detecting incorrect classifications performed by police officers. A final aspect to be discussed is the problems encountered because of the sometimes unstructured way of working of police officers. The added value of this paper resides in both using FCA for exploratory data analysis, as well as with the application of FCA for the detection of domestic violence.