They determined that law enforcement personnel could use the location data from Twitter to predict where crime might occur and why crime usually happens in less populated areas. Dr. Liu and a graduate student named Minxuan Lan led the research effort. “The spatio-temporal information embedded in tweets can be a potential asset to the crime pattern analysis by acting as an ambient population,” says Dr. Liu. Dr. Liu says only 4% of Twitter users always post their location data. “The potential of social media is in explaining crime and may also help predict future crime,” says Dr. Liu.

Source: Forbes February 05, 2020 19:41 UTC