CASPER: Computer Assisted Search Prioritisation and Environmental Response Application

Missing person cases consume time and effort on what are already over-stretched Police resources. Across the UK Police forces have to deal with approximately 1000 enquiries a day relating to missing persons. Current approaches are inherently manual and rely on Police domain knowledge to relate a missing person´s behavior to the surrounding geography and terrain. Searches are highly probabilistic, based on a missing person´s profile, mental and spatial behavior patterns. Computer support is available, but this is largely in the form of data entry and database systems. This paper describes the CASPER system which is a software application to provide computational support for missing person cases. The CASPER system is essentially a database fronted by a Google Map application. Its strengths lie in the richness of the data and the degree of interaction and information provided through the Map application to enable ´what-if´ search scenarios to be elaborated. The paper describes our on-going development of the CASPER system using missing person/suicide data for the Merseyside region in the UK.