Indian defence and police forces are effectively using data analytics for countering their foes.
What is data analytics?
Data analytics is the process of examining data sets in order to draw conclusions about the information they contain, increasingly with the aid of specialized systems and software.
It is widely used in commercial industries to enable organizations to make more informed business decisions.
Globally, defence analytics is a $2 billion market but it is still at a nascent stage in India.
Few budding analytics firms in India had helped the army in predicting border infiltration patterns and provided analytics services to BSF, CRPF and Police departments across the country.
Where all does it find relevance?
Border Incursion - Terrorists on the other side of the border usually send a herd of cattle to check for mines that the armed forces have placed on the border.
Analysis of past data has shown that the next incursion is likely to happen in about eleven or twelve days after a herd of cattle meanders close to the border.
Public agitation -When an agitation happens anywhere across the country, there are multiple factors like social media posts, hashtags or news articles, religious group's posts, etc
Based on these correlation metrics, all data are merged with the intelligence data from police agencies and a protest or agitation is predicted.
Smuggling - Few data analytics also predict that cross border infiltration and narcotic smuggling spike upwards on cloudy and foggy days.
Bomb Blast - During the 2013 Bangalore blast, Intelligence department analysed 1000 gigabytes of CCTV images from 3-5 traffic signals to reach out the criminal.
Locating strategic areas -During the 2016 assembly elections, Police in Assam used GPS data to plan the deployment of forces.
GPS imagery was used to plot polling booths routes in insurgency hit areas and plan force deployment better in case of disaster recovery.
Locating the criminals - Based on data points of where anonymous calls are arising during any political unrest, police allocate more patrolling vans to those areas.
Using frequency of cell phone tower signals police can locate criminals.
