Category Archives: Crime Tech A technique that helps crime
fighters zoom in on a serial killer’s whereabouts may help
scientists prevent deaths of a different sort — those caused by
infectious diseases. The widely used criminology technique,
called geographic profiling, helps investigators narrow a search
by pinpointing high-priority targets among thousands of
potential locations. In an upcoming International Journal of
Health Geographics, researchers demonstrated the technique’s
usefulness by identifying the sources of a recent malaria
outbreak in Cairo and reconstructing an infamous cholera
outbreak in Victorian London. Applying the technique to
infectious diseases could help focus interventions, perhaps
preventing the spread of disease while saving time and money. “I
think this has a lot of promise,” says disease ecologist Richard
Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook,
New York. “It’s a very interesting application of a
criminological tool to epidemiology.” When hunting criminals,