Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University co-developing intelligent crime investigation system

SUZHOU, China, Oct. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Detectives in China will benefit from an intelligent crime investigation system being developed by Dr Gangmin Li of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University along with a company located in the same city as XJTLU.

Dr Li, based in the University's Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, is using his research expertise in knowledge graphs, big data and AI to build the theoretical model at the heart of the system's intelligence.

The system's leading use of artificial intelligence is its competitive advantage, said Kejie Wu, a representative of the company, Jiangsu Huatong BigData Science and Technology Ltd.

"We will be the first to use the most advanced AI technology," Wu said.

The intelligent crime investigation system will store and display relationships among vast amounts of data, Dr Li explained.

"With any case there are different types of people involved – victims, suspects, witnesses, police officers, investigators," he said.

"There are also locations, such as the crime scene, home and work addresses and travel destinations. There are objects involved, such as a car or a phone – how was it used, who used it? And there are different times that events like meetings, messages, arrests and phone calls occurred.

"We look at the relationships between the people, locations, objects and times involved.

"Our work brings together a large amount of data to help find hidden hints or patterns that could help solve a crime.

"For example, maybe two suspects have no obvious connection, but their fathers' friends regularly went to the pub together. Our intelligent crime system could help detectives find surprising links."

Detectives once pinned pictures linked with string on an evidence board to help visualise cases. Today, computer software enables detectives to analyse case information in increasingly sophisticated ways.

The system will display related case information in a type of graph, called a knowledge graph, that allows the user to switch 'views' to see the information in different ways.

Dr Li explained this use of data visualisation allows users to see a large amount of information in a short time.

"It enables you to pull out the relationships in different visual formats. Knowledge graphs can communicate more than words," he said.

XJTLU is the largest international collaborative university in China, a partnership between Xi'an Jiaotong University and the University of Liverpool.