Improving Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) Surveillance by Text Mining Police Records
Tracks
Room 1: In-Person and Online
| Tuesday, November 26, 2024 |
| 11:50 AM - 12:10 PM |
| Room 1 |
Overview
Dr George Karystianis, University of New South Wales
Speaker
Dr George Karystianis
Research Fellow
UNSW
Improving Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) Surveillance by Text Mining Police Records
Abstract
Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a major societal problem in Australia with one in five adults experiencing DFV since the age of 15. However, significant information gaps prevent to form a comprehensive picture of this issue. Police are often the first to attend DFV events recording rich information such as the mental health status of perpetrators and victims, cause of the DVF event, sustained injuries, threats of future violence, substance use and abuse types all of which remain untapped for surveillance purposes. Applying text mining on the millions of DFV police records across Australia can provide up-to-date population-based insights and fill knowledge gaps for priority groups and at-risk settings in real time. This new data infrastructure leverages and expands on our successful work undertaken in NSW with police narratives to build a national DFV surveillance approach to better inform prevention and intervention strategies in Australia.
Key Learnings:
1. Use of automated method to process quickly millions of police records.
2. Fill in information gaps on domestic violence from population-based data.
3. Improving domestic violence surveillance from police records.
Key Learnings:
1. Use of automated method to process quickly millions of police records.
2. Fill in information gaps on domestic violence from population-based data.
3. Improving domestic violence surveillance from police records.
Biography
With a background in Computer Science and Medicine and a PhD in Text Mining and Epidemiology, Dr Karystianis has been designing for 16 years applications to extract information from large scale datasets and translate their findings into policy. He leads a world's first project to text mine millions of domestic violence police records in collaboration with several police jurisdictions to highlight the mental health needs of victims and perpetrators and the lived experience of under-investigated populations. His outputs have been incorporated into the NSW police’s infrastructure to improve domestic violence surveillance leading to the criminalization of coercive control in NSW.
