University Star

More than a decade ago, Texas State criminal justice professor Kim Rossmo developed an investigational method known as geospatial profiling to assist in the apprehension of serial criminals by attempting to narrow the search for the suspect’s residence or headquarters to a small range of potential locations. Now, this same method is being used to track one of the world’s oldest predators.

The information is derived from applying a complex mathematical algorithm, developed by Rossmo, to available evidence in each individual case — particularly existing attack locations and their positions relative to each other.

Since Rossmo developed the algorithm, the use of geospatial profiling has yielded results in criminal investigations, including the South Side Rapist in Louisiana and the Washington, D.C. sniper cases. Geospatial profiling has been employed in television shows, such as “Numb3rs” and “Law and Order.”

Even the United States military has explored applying geospatial profiling to insurgency attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan — giving U.S. troops the edge by plotting the locations of individual attacks and using that data to derive the locations of insurgency bases, safe-houses and weapons warehouses.

“The goal is to help law enforcement, intelligence and military agencies focus their limited resources in areas that are most likely to contain what they’re looking for,” Rossmo said.

Throughout the years, Rossmo’s algorithm and technique have seen numerous applications outside the field of criminal justice. Rossmo employed geospatial profiling to the study of habits and patterns of bees and bats, two species that depend on a tangible base of operations in order to thrive.

“I always try to think, ‘Where can it be applied next?’ and ‘Where will this take us?’” Rossmo said. “Some of the most interesting possibilities in law enforcement exist where different academic disciplines intersect. And this is really criminology, geography and mathematics, with maybe a little bit of forensic psychology. There is a lot of potential.”

Most recently, Rossmo and a team of researchers have applied geospatial profiling to the hunting patterns of the Great White Shark — an animal known to not depend on a den or similar structural headquarters. Their research was recently published in the scholarly periodical, Journal of Zoology.

Setting up shop at Seal Island in False Bay, South Africa, Rossmo and his research fellows collected detailed data on more than 300 individual shark attacks on Cape Fur Seals.

“Sharks are constantly swimming, and unlike other animals, they do not have the equivalent of a den, nest or burrow.” Rossmo said. “Therefore, establishing the existence (location, size and shape) of an anchor point or “centre of gravity” for a search pattern could provide important insight into their hunting behavior.”

After applying the geospatial profiling algorithm to the data, documenting the precise location of shark attacks and the approximate size of the animals, Rossmo discovered a pattern.

“We found that spatial patterns of shark predation at this site were nonrandom.” Rossmo said. “Sharks also processed a well-defined anchor point or search base, but not where the chances of prey interception were greatest. This location may therefore represent a balance of prey detection, capture rates and inter-shark competition.”

Because shark attacks, statistically speaking, are rarely observable in the wild, the hunting habits and patterns of Great White Sharks have remained largely unexplained to the scientific community. Some researchers postulated that the concentration of shark attacks was directly proportional to the amount of prey in any given area, but Rossmo’s research reveals the actual truth may be far more complex.

“We found that smaller sharks had more dispersed prey search patterns and lower success rates than larger sharks,” Rossmo said. “This could mean white sharks refine their search patterns with experience, and learn to concentrate hunting efforts in locations with the highest probability of successful prey capture. It might also be larger sharks competitively exclude smaller sharks from the best hunting areas.”

Rossmo cited the dramatically decreasing global population of Great White Sharks, and a general lack of human understanding of the animal as sources of driving motivation for the project.

“Sharks are apex predators, so studies of shark hunting behavior are important for understanding their ecology and role in structuring marine communities,” Rossmo said. “Our need for more knowledge of these fascinating animals has become critical because of recent, drastic declines in their populations globally.”