HunchLab

About the city. New York City is using smart city solutions to help solve problems such as water quality, conservation, public safety, and waste management.

Goal

The purpose of HunchLab is to make policing more objective and less subject to individual bias.

Implementation period. The first time the New York Police Department conducted a 45-day test of software company Azavea’s HunchLab platform in 2015.

Fact

New York’s crime rates grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s when the crack epidemic began, but it has been dropping since 1991, and as of 2017, it is one of the lowest among major cities in the United States.

Solutions

The HunchLab’s software models crime forecasts based on “temporal patterns” (time of day, day of week, day of month, seasonality); weather; environmental risk factors (locations of bars, bus stops, etc.); socioeconomic indicators; historic crime levels; and near-repeat patterns to help police departments understand and respond more effectively to crime using the resources available to them.

This solution was made to identify crime hotspots, helping police increase public safety.

Challenges

Some opponents argued that police algorithms disproportionately target areas with large numbers of people of colour and low-income residents because they reinforce stereotypes: for example, data on the frequency of past arrests may lead the algorithm to target low-income areas.

Team

Philadelphia-based company Azavea, NYPD

Timeline

Some predictions provided additional information and helped commanders and officers in making day-to-day targeting decisions.

In 2017 HunchLab was sold to Shotspotter.

If you notice an error or inaccuracy in our editorials, please email [email protected] so we can look into it.