WEB DESK: A crime whether minor or major should not be ignored. Although, there are strategies already made to cope with any sort of criminal attack but still you can't predict when an unfortunate incident may occur.

To ensure safety of citizens, a research was done in this regard and it was figured out that Twitter, a micro blogging site may be a powerful tool that can predict crimes. Because, it is an open site and anyone can access Global Positioning System (GPS)-tagged tweets generated in a given area.

The claim was made after analyzing over 1.5 million public tweets. Matthew Gerber, assistant professor at University of Virginia in the US, said,"My initial hypothesis was that there would be no correlation between Twitter use and crime. After all, people do not share with the world that they intend to or have just committed a crime."

They conducted research on data consist of more than 1.5 million public tweets which were incorporate with Chicago-area GPS coordinates - dated back to January to March (2013). Along with this, the researchers analyzed crime record of the same period and geographic area.

Moreover, after thorough investigation of tweets and crime records, they observed topic of discussion that were tweeted by the public and they found out sports, restaurants, and entertainment.

Hence, they combined conclusions of their analysis with previous forecasting models to predict criminal activity over the next month. Later, researchers were found out the outcome of the combined procedure was more appropriate as it predicted 19 out of 25 kind of crimes.

Lastly, Gerber stated,“Some cities that utilise such methods as a basis for resource allocation have seen dramatic decreases in crime."

Source: Hindustan Times