Synthesizing Data
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As an investigator you are responsible for creating a model of the incident.
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What happened?
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How?
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Who was involved?
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Why?
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Is it a crime?
Your model of the incident must be built upon evidence. The link between the evidence and the model you create is sound analysis.
Therefore, your analytical process is the key to successful use of information. Sound analytical process transforms raw data into intelligence.
How do you go about systematically analyzing your data so that it becomes useful?
Use two critical thinking skills:
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Synthesis - creative process of combining elements or pieces to form a connected whole
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Logic-based sense-making
Synthesis tasks are basically two main activities that assist investigators in building and enhancing your model of an incident (crime):
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Creating, editing, and deleting entities. Investigators think in terms of people, places, objects, their relationships and groups.
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Creating, editing, and deleting relationships. Descriptive associations between entities help discover similarities and ultimately solve criminal investigations. The impact of link (relation) analysis is critical for determining motive.
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adapted from Petersen, R. R., & Wiil, U. K. (May 2013). CrimeFighter Investigator: Integrating synthesis and sense-making for criminal network investigation. Security Informatics, 2:10. https://doi.org/10.1186/2190-8532-2-10
