Increasing Student and Community Safety

This collaboration between the West Virginia University Police Department,academic researchers and the city of Morgantown WV supports the adoption of geospatial crime analysis techniques across separate police jurisdictions to provide intelligence led decision making capabilities which focus on enhancing the safety and security of college students, both on and off campus. Through a problem-oriented approach, the crime reduction and prevention strategies will benefit the larger community and increase the capacity for law enforcement agencies to share information across jurisdictional boundaries. In an effort to enhance the quality of life through the creation of safer campuses and communities, this partnership will employ daily criminal activity reports to analyze and identify
spatial and temporal crime patterns across multiple law enforcement jurisdictions, facilitate information exchange through the creation of a Geographic Information System, and enhance collective crime reduction measures resulting from intelligence led analysis of the data. While criminal activity may vary uniquely across jurisdictions, the research component has been devised to identify and reduce risks to university students on and off campus.

This collaboration between the West Virginia University Police Department, Morgantown Police Department and West Virginia University Department of Geography researchers will demonstrate the viability of multi-jurisdictional problem oriented crime analysis for other potential victim groups as well as enable additional research into casual relationships.
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