

Ask HN:Thoughts on Crowdsourcing Crime reports - mukgupta

I am from India and I  recently started an initiative to fight crime using crowd-sourcing .Here is the link to beta application http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zerocrime.org.<p>Currently users can file unoffical reports and we place them on the map.
Over time, We plan to aggregate these reports to create a crime rating index of neighborhoods and areas will be color-coded as per their crime rating. We will also conduct advanced analytics and longitudinal studies to generate meaningful insights for law enforcement agencies and media houses. We also plan to develop crime prevention tools such as prediction of crime through data analysis.<p>Thoughts ?
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mfalcon
How will you identify fake reports?. I think it could be a good idea, but the
map can be intentionally modified by random people as I see it.

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mukgupta
It is difficult as we do not ask for any personal information of the reporter
(except email address) and all reports are filed anonymously. At present, we
are validating the genuineness of the reporter through email verification. I
understand that won't ensure complete genuineness but the idea is not to focus
on individual reports. An area will be tagged high-risk only when sufficient
numbers of cases of a particular crime are filed on the platform. Even if
there are a few fake entries, the threat will definitely be real and the idea
is to bring that forward. Moreover, we are doing manual moderation and in
future we plan to add crowd-moderation that can help in identifying fake
reports to some extent .

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davidsmith8900
\- I think it is a great idea, especially if you can make it in real time.

