QlikView used to track down alleged serial killer in Sweden

QlikTech, (NASDAQ:QLIK) a leader in Business Discovery - user-driven business intelligence, today announced that police analysts in Sweden have used QlikView to assist with a high profile crime case that lasted more than a year. QlikView has enabled the police to analyse data and reports that would have taken one police officer in excess of 43 years.

“Speed is of essence in any police work all over the world,” said police analyst Berth Simonsson. “With this groundbreaking technology, we can save lives, predict crime and target anti-social behaviour.”

The crimes took place in the Swedish city of Malm"o, where people were shot at while they stood at bus stops, sat in their cars, and moved about indoors. One person has died and several others have been wounded in the attacks. The Skane (southern Sweden) police department currently has approximately 100 QlikView applications, rolled out over the past three years. Malm"o police analyst Berth Simonsson is part of a team of two who support 3 500 people in the police force, including about 50 analysts. Although the Malm"o police department is a long-time customer of QlikView, it had never been used to analyse criminal activity.

For this case, the analysts loaded 10 years' worth of crime reports (two million reports, comprising two billion rows of data) into an existing QlikView application. It took three hours to load the data and configure interactive reports, and then police analysts could immediately begin investigating the data. Because of the power of QlikView to analyse multiple data streams from any source, the police department was also able to add in and cross-reference information from the “tip line” submitted from vigilant citizens.

Simonsson commented: "QlikView has been a labour-saving tool for the police. Police analysts ask questions and QlikView delivers answers instantly. Instead of going through the reports manually, we have been able to go through lots of information quickly to find the link that otherwise would have been hard to detect."

Nine months of work in one minute. Without QlikView, police analysts would have had to read every crime report manually to search for clues that might lead them to a suspect. Simonsson estimated that it would have taken three people three months to read through just one year of reports. With the additional 10 years' worth of historical data for this serial killer case, analysing the entire set could have taken 43 years for one officer to analyse.

If police analysts have an idea about a case, they can use QlikView to test clues. They can search for any city, time of day, reported behaviour, or other details. The QlikView associative experience enables them to explore trends in the data. If they find something of interest (eg, red car or red truck), they can click a button to view the entire crime report immediately.

Now that the police analysts have experienced the power of QlikView for solving crimes, they are planning to use it more broadly. The department checks about 10 000 people every year in Skane and they can use QlikView to analyse who has been checked and when.

Applications for car theft and street crimes like assaults are in the plan, and the department has goals of using QlikView to reduce crimes in specific areas.