Dubai Police’s innovative “Crime Prediction Analysis” system is still in the trial phase and aims to decrease the number of crimes across the city and help police predict crimes before they happen using big data.

Brigadier Kamal Butti Al Suwaidi, Director of the Operations Department at Dubai Police, said the new system allows police to anticipate areas where crimes can happen, identify crime hotspots and increase police presence in those areas.

“The system is being used for the first time in the region. It is designed and created by Dubai Police from the scratch and is designed based on our experiences, specifications and information. There are similar programmes used in other countries, but not exactly the same,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday, adding that they will patent the system, which the task force had started working on in 2014.

The system uses all data available to it from Dubai Police records and uses an algorithm derived from scientific researches that spanned 20 years from reputable international organisations, to predict — using the data — where the next crime is likely to happen.

“We enter certain parameters and the system responds to those parameters to give us an idea of the areas that fit our criteria,” he said.

Dubai Police held a quick demonstration of the programme to the media.

The officer chose Mirdif as an example and a three-month time frame at the end of 2015, the type of crime, in this case home robberies, and the system gave back percentages of the probability of this crime happening within this time frame in this area.

According to the system, 2630 incidents took place in the area, of which 29 were home robberies.

It was also able to forecast the probability of the crime taking place at certain times of the day — with percentages — and showed the spots where the crime had happened before.

The officer then asked the system to predict the location of where the next crime will happen and it did.

“The system was very accurate, as you can see, a crime did take place in that time frame in an area very near the place the system had predicted,” Brig Al Suwaidi said.

“The system can also advise us on the best route for patrols and whether there is a good surveillance camera coverage in areas,” he added.

The system will be used for both traffic and crime predictions.

“Our aim is to reduce crime rates in the city, and we are confident the system will allow us to do so,” he said, adding that late Dubai Police Chief, Lt-General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, was very supportive of the development of this system as he was keen any innovative ways to carry out police work.

This, Brig Al Suwaidi said, is only the first step, as they aim to integrate this programme with other systems in the future.