Automating the Reading of Crime Reports Some Technical Issues

1. Tupai - Navigating Intelligence Systems Automating the Reading of Crime Reports Some Technical Issues

2. Sample Crime Report The sample report is of Versace’s murder in Miami Beach. Case 97-24687 Miami Beach Police Department (MBPD) Offense/Incident: Homicide Victim: Versace, Gianni OFFICER REPORTING: Detective P. Scrimshaw ID #0420 REPORT DATE: 7-19-97 APPROX 0846 HRS 15 JULY 97 I RESPONDED TO THE CALL OF A SHOOTING IN THE 1100 BLK OF OCEAN DRIVE. I ARRIVED ON THE SCENE AT APPROX 0855 HRS. Source TheSmokingGun

3. Technical Issues • Event Structure • Partial Instantiation • Bounded Instantiation • Dynamically Combining Classes • Actions & Interactions • Mapping • Waking - Dynamic Modelling

4. Event Structure The crime report is itself both an event and an event structure, as in it are described processes, directly observed events, events recounted by witnesses, reports by others, maps (the layout of the residence, the location of blood and bullets).

5. Event Structure A structure representing all the report information needs to be automatically built as the text is read, so inferences can be drawn - one witness saw two subjects fleeing the scene, another witness recounts chasing the shooter. The events are not necessarily described in chronological order, so embellishment and restructuring will occur during the reading process.

6. Partial Instantiation The objects - police officers, criminals, locations - are too complex to instantiate in their entirety. Only a few properties are instantiated - just enough to make sense of what is said and any inferences that flow from that. “Det. Tepperburg saw ... See her report.” A table lookup tells us that Det. Tepperburg is female. Other than that, and a badge number and the organisation she works for, we don’t try to find out.

7. Partial Instantiation Just In Time Properties - not before they are needed

8. Unless Specifically Stated... The properties not instantiated are in default states, and all actions not specifically limited are possible, so for a Person object, everything is operating normally - they have body covering, are conscious, breathing, can walk, run, etc. Partial Instantiation changes those default states, so we only need to record new states that cannot be inferred from already instantiated states.

9. Bounded Instantiation “A bone in his arm was shattered” There are many bones in his arm, and he has two arms. Instead of linking to all of them through an object XOR, an instantiated structure is created, pointing to arm and to bone - indicating any path between them may be activated.

10. Dynamic Classing The vocabulary the report draws from is large – thousands of words – and they can be combined in many ways –“injured fireman”– so it is not possible to have a class waiting to be instantiated for every object described. Classes may need to be ANDed or ORed together, or attributes need to be fully or partially nullified or negated.

11. ANDed Classes A class is dynamically created out of several parallel classes, with properties overlaying - “injured fireman” - the person became injured after he became a fireman

12. ORed Classes The ORing of subclasses preserves imprecise information - “a black van or SUV” - causing the attributes of the subclasses to be merged

13. Attributes Nullified “The man had no legs” This is a very basic way of creating classes - how a child comes to understand what a dog is, for example - and how we understand much of the world around us - not by introducing new properties to a base class, but by stripping them and their consequents from classes of things we are already familiar with. We also have to handle the case where the attributes still exist, but are damaged.

14. Partial Negation “He was shot in the leg” The action of walking uses the legs, so his walking may be affected by the injury. The normal conditions that didn’t require instantiation are now upset. We will need to be able to estimate the partial or complete degradation of the system from wounds sustained. Similarly, we might be told “He can’t walk”, and need to work the other way as to what is wrong.

15. Mapping The human brain contains a map of the human, emphasising the sensory areas. We need to map the orientation of, and connection between, bones, muscles, arteries and nerve tissue to be able to forecast the effect of wounds. Maps are also needed for typical objects - houses, commercial buildings, crime scenes.

16. Actions Joe has gun Joe holds gun Joe points gun at Fred Joe pulls trigger (of gun) Gun marks bullet Gun propels bullet Bullet hits Fred Joe shoots Fred An action is a process, consisting of a stream of more basic actions. Expansion of the action exposes the other objects involved in the process.

17. Nerve Arcs To handle damage, we will need to build two structures - objects and actions - and bind them together with logical states. The logical states both initiate actions, and control whether they are feasible, based on the state of the objects.

18. Waking The human object includes a model of consciousness that supports coma, brain death, and tiredness or extreme pain causing loss of consciousness. A cycle of breathing, blood circulation and brain activity can be shocked back into action. Loss of this cycle results in death.

19. Active Structure An active structure can support all these diverse elements - objects, actions, attributes and states - and build them into higher level structures. The high level structure is acted on by the text of the crime report, which builds more structure, which then interacts with the text in the crime report.