GIS ‘Crime’ and GIS ‘Criminality’

GIS 'crime' and GIS 'criminality' As I have argued strongly in support of GIS in a geographical context in previous commentaries (Openshaw, 1991; 1992), it may seem strange that I now discuss the prospects for GIS 'crime' and 'criminality'. Whilst GIS is undoubtedly a very powerful and widely applicable technology relevant to many management and planning (with a small 'p') processes, it also has a number of risks associated with it that need to be appreciated and which have yet to be adequately addressed. These risks and dangers reflect its inherently applied nature. But despite these 'risks' the global enthusiasm for GIS is quite understandable. The digital revolution in the paper mapmaking, handling, and using industries is clearly a major step forward, with profound secondary implications for many related activities and professions—not all of which realise it as yet. It is an intrinsic characteristic of GIS that the technology will be used in applications that matter, as distinct from purely research and more academic domains, with a consequential increased prospect of misuse. To put it more bluntly, when GISs are used there is a danger of some GIS-inspired decisions killing people, ruining businesses, and wasting public resources. The converse is also true, in that not using GIS technology may actually lead to poorer decisionmaking and this could also increase the risks of harm, but that is of little comfort. Additionally, there is an argument that all decisionmaking is by its nature inherently harmful, with winners and losers, and that the trick is to increase the ratio of winners! The concern here is that because GIS is such a widely applicable technology and is being adopted widely, then attempts need to be made to render it intrinsically safe. Indeed the estimates of GIS growth during the 1990s emphasise this point. Dangermund (1990) talks about one million GIS workers by the end of the 1990s, whilst Rhind (1991) predicts in excess of 580000 GISs in use with a global market worth over six billion dollars. The concern is that with so many GISs being applied to a plethora of problems, at many different scales and scattered across many disciplines, there is a real and rapidly increasing prospect of GIS-based spatial decision-support systems being blamed for causing damage and harm owing to virtually any permutation of data errors, misapplications, GIS user abuse, and even deliberate use as a weapon of war or terrorism.