The University of Bristol will lead the way in supporting how data can make streets safer.

REPHRAIN has received funding from the UKRI’s Concentrations of Crime Data R&I Challenge, part of the Safer Streets R&D Mission, exploring how advanced data analysis can inform more effective crime prevention strategies.

Online spaces play a considerable role in inciting, increasing, normalising and organising knife crime, violence against women and girls (VAWG) and anti-social behaviour (ASB). Online interactions shape offline behaviours, actions on the streets and within communities, and vice versa.

This funding will allow REPHRAIN to undertake research into this intersection between online and offline behaviours and harms to develop and pilot new capabilities for detection, tracking and prediction of the locations where crime concentrates; the focus areas being VAWG, ASB and knife crime. The project team will work in collaboration with communities and community-based organisations to understand crime-related issues locally and potential for targeted prevention. The aim is to work in partnership with the communities who are directly impacted and have their voice as central to the design of any prevention mechanisms. At the same time, there will be collaboration with local law enforcement to establish how insights from community experiences and online data can be effectively used to support local policing efforts. This will be combined with cutting edge methods for linking digital data to individual and group characteristics for developing predictive models for prevention of VAWG, ASB and knife crime to support the Safer Streets mission.

The research will draw upon expertise from colleagues at the University of Bath (Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour) and Sheffield Hallam University (CENTRIC) and use the network of academics within the REPHRAIN community to explore (pilot, test, scale) and amplify the work being undertaken.

“In this first phase, our goal is to develop a map of data gaps in this regard, understand the limitations of current prevention and awareness mechanisms and prototype new mechanisms co-designed with communities and local law enforcement. Our long term goal is for the REPHRAIN centre to develop a blueprint for scalable, evidence-based integrated data systems for linking online harms and street crime in order to ensure that interventions address community needs and lead to a real change.” said Professor Awais Rashid, Director of the REPHRAIN Centre and project lead for the REPHRAIN Safer Streets project.

Further information the wider funding call is available.